UC-NRLF 


$B    EfiS    Ihl 


GIFT  OF 


WANTE 
A  THEOLOGY 


BY 

SAMUEL  T.  CARTER,  D.D. 


FUNK  &  WAGNALLS  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
1908 


COPYRIGHT,  1908,  BY 
FUNK  &  WAGNALLS  COMPANY 


[Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America^ 


Published  May,   1908 


Be&tcatton 


TO     MY     DEAR     WIFE,      NOW      WITH      GOD,      WHOSE 

LIFE    OF    PATIENT,    GENTLE    GOODNESS    AND 

COMPLETE     SELF-SACRIFICE     WAS     A 

BEAUTIFUL    REVELATION   OF 

THE   INFINITE   LOVE 


an 


I  HAVE  appealed  to  my  Presbytery,  to  the  Synod 
of  New  York,  and  to  the  General  Assembly  against 
the  further  acceptance  of  the  scholastic  theology. 
The  appeal  has  had  a  wide  publication,  but  there 
has  been  no  ecclesiastical  action  upon  it.  It 
seems  right  to  take  a  further  step,  and  to  suggest 
what  is  now  believed  by  very  many,  and  what 
might,  with  modifications,  be  substituted  for  an 
old  and  outworn  creed  that  does  not  commend 
itself  to  the  convictions  of  a  large  number,  and  is 
repellent  to  a  great  many  of  the  most  thoughtful 
and  earnest  people.  This  is  the  purpose  of  the 
following  treatise. 

EAST  ORANGE,  N.  J. 


Contents 

PAGE 

I.  WANTED — A  THEOLOGY,   ...      9 
II.  GOD,       .        .        .  .     23 

III.  JESUS  CHRIST,          .        .        .        -34 

IV.  MAN,       .        .         .  -     45 
V.  FUTURE  PUNISHMENT,       .        .        .     70 

VI.  THE  CHURCH, 91 

VII.  REJOICE  AND  BE  EXCEEDING  GLAD,   .  109 


THE  world  wants  to-day  more  than  anything 
else  a  new  theology.  We  call  it  a  new  the- 
ology in  distinction  from  the  old  that  has  been 
in  vogue  for  centuries  in  Christendom.  But  in 
fact  the  new  theology  wanted  is  the  oldest  the- 
ology of  all,  the  theology  of  the  mind  and  heart 
of  God — the  theology  that  fell  so  brightly  and 
beautifully  from  the  lips  of  the  Lord  Jesus — 
the  theology  of  all  the  saints  and  sages  of  all  the 
world.  But  it  is  a  new  theology  in  distinction 
from  the  received  theology,  the  theology  of  the 
monks,  the  theology  of  the  ordinary  pulpit  and 
convention  of  to-day,  which  has  gone  for  long 
under  the  arrogant  name  of  "  orthodoxy."  This 
old  theology  is  one  of  the  saddest,  darkest,  cruel- 
est  products  of  the  human  mind  in  all  the  ages. 


[9] 


WANTED— A   THEOLOGY 

It  is  perversely  and  ingeniously  wrong,  and  the 
minds  of  intelligent  men  and  women  have  been 
long  distrest  by  hearing  it,  being  assured  that  it 
is  "the  truth,"  and  the  truth  upon  the  most  seri- 
ously important  matters,  and  by  being  as  con- 
tinually outraged  in  all  their  best  thoughts  and 
feelings  by  it. 

We  step  out  under  the  sublime  vault  of  heaven 
and  see  moon  and  stars  riding  in  their  majesty 
above  us.  Taught  by  modern  astronomy  we 
have  learned  that  these  little  points  of  light  are 
great  suns  like  our  own  blazing  sun,  many  of 
them  vastly  greater  than  our  own.  With  little 
doubt  each  one  of  them  is  leading  on  a  grand 
array  of  satellites  as  our  own  sun  is  doing.  There 
are  millions  of  these  radiant  suns  and  they  are 
moving  with  inconceivable  swiftness  through  the 
realms  of  space,  and  yet  they  keep  their  great 
courses  and  not  one  dashes  against  another. 
And  the  greatness  of  their  size,  of  their  numbers, 
and  of  the  boundless  realm  of  space  through 

[10] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

which  they  move  is  something  hardly  expressi- 
ble in  human  language,  goes  beyond  all  our 
thought  or  searching,  the  wildest  fancy  can  not 
realize  it.  Then  we  feel  that  all  this  demands 
the  fullest,  highest  thought  and  will  and  good- 
ness for  its  production  and  maintenance,  de- 
mands in  the  most  absolute  way,  just  God. 

The  spacious  firmament  on  high 

And  all  the  blue,  ethereal  sky, 

The  spangled  heavens,  a  shining  frame, 

Their  great  original  proclaim. 

In  reason's  ear  they  all  rejoice 

And  utter  forth  a  glorious  voice, 

Forever  singing  as  they  shine, 

"The  hand  that  made  us  is  divine." 

Laplace  says,  "There  are  two  hundred  mil- 
lions of  millions  chances  against  one  that  the  uni- 
verse is  the  result  of  design  and  not  of  chance. " 
And  Herbert  Spencer  says,  "One  truth  must 
ever  grow  clearer  and  clearer,  the  truth  that  there 
is  an  inscrutable  existence  everywhere  mani- 
fested. Amid  mysteries  that  become  more  mys- 
terious the  more  we  think  of  them,  there  will  re- 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

main  one  absolute  certainty  that  we  are  ever  in 
the  presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy 
from  which  all  things  proceed." 

Yes;  all  this  is  most  positive,  absolute,  final — 
it  means  God.  And  so  is  it  with  all  God's  revela- 
tions, they  speak  Himself. 

Now  let  us  step  out  into  the  world  of  the  old 
theology  and  give  a  quick  sketch  of  its  teachings. 
There  is  a  great  God,  Ruler  of  all.  He  has  made 
a  marvelous  creature  in  his  own  image,  Man. 
The  first  great  act  of  man  is  to  fall  so  as  to  be- 
come utterly  corrupt,  totally  depraved,  prone  to 
all  evil  and  averse  to  all  good.  The  great  God  is 
furiously  angry  with  this  sinful  man;  as  Jona- 
than Edwards  says,  he  holds  him  above  hell  as 
you  would  hold  a  venomous  spider  over  your  fire. 
His  son,  Jesus  Christ,  soothes  and  placates  this 
fierce  wrath  of  Jehovah  by  his  death  upon  the 
cross.  The  vast  mass  and  sum  of  men  in  the 
past  have  gone  down  to  the  abyss  of  hell,  a  lake 
of  fire  burning  with  brimstone;  the  heathen  in 

[12] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

one  great  body  have  been  consigned  there,  a.nd 
there  lost  men  shall  abide  forever  and  ever,  bear- 
ing the  most  dreadful  tortures  and  strengthened 
by  God  to  be  able  to  endure  them.  Now  I  ask, 
do  we  have  the  same  feeling  here  as  when  we 
look  up  to  the  heavens  and  learn  the  lessons  of 
astronomy?  Does  the  old  theology  demand  the 
great,  good  God?  Do  we  feel  that  these  two 
things  have  the  same  glorious  author?  By  no 
means.  We  feel  that  the  one  who  has  done  so 
magnificently  in  the  way  of  worlds  seems  to  have 
utterly  failed  in  the  far  higher  work  of  man.  The 
one  suggests  glory  and  triumph,  the  other  shame 
and  weakness  and  failure. 

No  one  who  reads  over  a  brief  statement  of  the 
old  theology  is  sufficiently  imprest  with  its  awful 
horror  for  the  reason  that  we  have  been  familiar- 
ized with  many  of  its  terrors.  In  fact  so  thor- 
oughly has  it  been  drilled  into  the  generations 
from  their  childhood  that  they  have  simply  taken 
it  as  a  thing  of  course.  And  a  very  different  rea- 

[13] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

son  has  led  the  great  company  of  Christian  peo- 
ple in  these  later  days  to  endure  the  old  theology, 
namely  this:  that  its  worst  horrors  have  been 
of  late  years  concealed — it  is  probably  never 
preached  to-day  in  its  fullest  absurdity.  If  it 
were  preached  to-day  as  it  was  one  hundred  years 
ago,  it  would  be  flung  out  of  pulpit  and  church 
with  an  outbreak  of  popular  indignation.  Let 
any  one  sit  down  and  try  to  realize  to  himself  the 
dreadful  features  of  this  theology,  a  whole  race, 
and  a  very  wonderful  race,  utterly  lost,  curst, 
damned  by  God,  and  an  endless  torment  en- 
dured to-day  by  countless  millions  of  our  fellow 
men  on  the  burning  marl  of  hell,  and  the  result 
must  be  either  quick  rejection  or  insanity. 

I  am  persuaded  that  many  of  my  readers  think 
that  I  use  too  strong  language  on  this  subject. 
That  is  not  my  difficulty,  rather  it  is  of  the  oppo- 
site sort,  that  the  English  language  was  not  con- 
structed with  any  reference  to  the  old  theology 
and  has  not  expletives  enough  or  strong  enough 

[14] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

to  set  forth  its  cruelty.  Perhaps  Volapiik  or  Es- 
peranto may  invent  such;  then  I  shall  be  very 
glad  to  use  them.  In  the  mean  time  more  vigor- 
ous adjectives  are  called  for  than  any  I  can  light 
upon,  and  I  have  to  be  content  to  use  feebly  what 
I  have  at  hand. 

I  want  it  to  be  well  understood  that  I  do  not 
write  the  present  treatise  to  say  that  the  old  the- 
ology has  room  for  improvement,  is  not  well 
adapted  to  the  presenjt  time  and  ought  to  be  re- 
vised and  corrected,  and  then  adopted  at  ordina- 
tions and  councils.  My  purpose  is  very  different 
from  this;  it  is  to  express  my  utter  abhorrence 
for  the  whole  system  as  a  system,  to  declare  that 
in  the  light  of  the  present  day  it  is  simply  abom- 
inable, something  that  neither  God  nor  man  can 
bear  any  longer.  It  has  been  a  dreadful  burden 
for  ages,  it  is  an  unendurable  burden  for  this 
time,  and  should  be  utterly  swept  away  with  the 
besom  of  the  hot  indignation  of  the  whole  mass 
of  the  people. 

[15] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

But  the  strong  language  used  as  to  the  theology 
does  not  at  all  apply  to  the  worthy  people  who 
accept  it.  They  are  of  the  excellent  of  the  earth, 
and  having  received  these  dreadful  teachings 
from  parents  and  pastors  they  naturally  accept 
them  on  their  authority.  It  will  be  the  highest 
kindness  to  deliver  them,  but  they  can  not  see  it 
in  that  light.  Like  the  Prisoner  of  Chillon: 

"My  very  chains  and  I  grew  friends. 
So  much  a  long  communion  tends 
To  make  us  what  we  are;  even  I 
Regained  my  freedom  with  a  sigh." 

By  the  general  spread  of  light,  the  growth  of 
milder  ways  of  thinking  and  doing,  and  by  the 
sheer  terror  of  the  old  theology  itself,  a  vast  com- 
pany of  intelligent  people  have  been  led  to  throw 
off  this  most  distressing  bondage.  But  cer- 
tain seminaries  seem  hardly  to  have  heard  that 
there  is  any  new  theology,  and  there  is  quite  a  large 
company  of  ministers  trained  in  such  institutions 
who  still  maintain  this  dreadful  and  antiquated 


[16] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

system.  The  brighter  men  and  the  younger 
men  want  to  say  as  little  about  the  old  theology 
as  may  be.  They  are  distrest  to  have  to  declare 
their  acceptance  of  the  Westminster  Confession, 
and  fall  back  upon  a  large  variety  of  reasons  why 
their  solemn  "Yes"  in  ordination  really  means 
"No."  I  think  if  they  tried  the  same  treatment 
with  an  oath  in  the  law  courts  that  they  use  with 
the  most  solemn  affirmation  of  ordination  they 
would  come  to  grief  very  speedily. 

In  passing  let  me  say  that  there  is  one  pecul- 
iarly objectionable  person,  who  has  quite  too 
much  intelligence  to  accept  the  old  theology,  to 
whom  it  is  simply  unthinkable,  who  yet  goes  on 
to  show  that  it  may  all  be  explained  in  some  mys- 
tic, occult,  or  poetic  way.  The  fact  is  that  there 
is  nothing  mystic,  occult,  or  poetic  in  the  old 
theology;  it  is  bare,  hard,  cold  talk;  it  is  plain 
and  understandable  and,  to  us  in  this  day,  mon- 
strous. The  men  who  made  this  theology  put  in 
plain  terms  just  their  faith.  They  meant  what 

[17] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

they  said  and  said  what  they  meant,  and  the  men 
who  are  drawing  out  its  mystic,  hidden  meaning 
had  better  be  otherwise  engaged.  And  we  must 
all  of  us  lay  to  our  souls  this  solemn  consideration, 
that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  bread  and  butter,  and 
there  are  many  fine  pulpits  and  professors'  chairs, 
back  of  the  old  theology,  and  this  should  make  us 
very  careful  lest  we  be  tempted  not  to  speak  our 
minds  about  its  dreadful  character. 

I  must  put  in  a  plea  here  against  the  common 
sneers  at  theology  and  scoffs  at  doctrine.  These 
have  come  from  the  false  doctrines  and  miserable 
theology  that  we  have  had.  Theology  will  al- 
ways remain  the  queen  of  sciences.  We  need  a 
good,  preachable  theology  more  than  anything. 
This  despising  of  theology  has  made  preaching 
the  contemptible  thing  it  often  is.  All  overmas- 
tering power  has  gone  from  it  and  never  will 
come  back  till  the  preachers  have  found  the  true 
theology,  based  on  the  love  of  God  and  the 
brotherhood  of  man.  A  true  theology  has  al- 

[18] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

ways  been  a  tremendous  force  and  in  every  age 
has  bowed  the  hearts  of  men  before  it.  This 
beggarly  remnant  of  rags  and  tatters  that  we  have 
had,  will  never  move  a  soul  of  man,  much  less 
save  it. 

A  word  may  be  allowed  here  on  a  kindred  sub- 
ject, the  prevalent  custom  in  certain  theological 
seminaries  of  drawing  students  on  to  the  accep- 
tance of  a  theological  system  which  outrages  all 
modern  thinking.  Their  men  have  to  get  into 
the  ministry  and  there  must  be  a  little  hocus- 
pocus  to  get  them  in,  in  spite  of  their  inward  re- 
volting. In  the  course  of  affairs  the  entire  de- 
parture from  absolute  integrity  is  lost  sight  of. 
It  is  a  triumph  of  brain  over  commonest  morals. 
I  pray  the  seminaries  to  look  into  this  matter. 
If  they  would  train  their  young  men,  when  asked 
at  ordination  if  they  accepted  the  Westminster 
Confession,  to  answer  bravely,  "No,  we  do  not," 
it  would  clear  the  whole  atmosphere,  and  help  the 
morality  of  the  Continent;  more  especially  as  the 

[19] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

Church  in  general  is  saying,  "No,  we  do  not," 
with  more  and  more  emphasis.  God  is  always 
teaching  us  theology.  It  would  be  a  misfortune 
for  the  theological  seminaries  to  be  the  last  to 
learn  it. 

The  General  Assembly  of  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land in  the  year  1907  struggled  with  the  distress- 
ing question  of  subscribing  to  the  Westminster 
Confession,  and  instead  of  simply  saying  that 
they  do  not  consider  it  a  satisfactory  presentation 
of  the  character  of  God  or  of  the  great  truths  of 
religion,  they  have  adopted  an  amended  formula: 
"I  hereby  subscribe  to  the  Confession  of  Faith, 
the  public  and  avowed  Confession  of  the  Church 
approved  by  former  Assemblies  as  most  agreeable 
to  the  Word  of  God  and  ratified  by  Parliament 
in  the  year  1690,  declaring  that  I  believe  the  Re- 
formed Faith  therein  set  forth.  To  that,  will  I 
adhere."  The  simple  fact  remains  that  any 
statement  of  religion  of  the  Parliament  of  1690 
would  be  objectionable,  if  not  revolting,  to  Chris- 

[20] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

tian  people  now,  and  that  the  Westminster  Con- 
fession is  both  objectionable  and  revolting,  and  it 
would  be  a  hundred  times  better  to  say  so.  It 
is  thought  that  there  is  quite  a  moral  twist  in 
finance  and  in  politics  at  present.  Would  it  be 
strange  if  it  could  be  traced  back  to  the  twist  in 
the  pulpit,  the  seminary,  and  the  Church  in  gen- 
eral? It  is  very  difficult  to  receive  straight  mor- 
ality from  a  crooked  man. 

Having  thus  far  very  briefly  treated  some  of 
the  unpleasant  aspects  of  the  old  theology,  we 
have  before  us  the  delightful  and  even  thrilling 
consideration  of  what  the  New  Theology  is — how 
beautiful  and  glad  and  divine.  I  trust  I  shall 
not  be  judged  foolish  enough  to  think  that  I  can 
give  in  this  little  treatise  the  full  coming  theology; 
for  I  believe  that  that  theology  is  only  in  the  heart 
of  God  himself,  that  his  capacious  mind  alone 
can  contain  it,  that  in  order  fully  to  know  it  we 
should  have  to  be  God  ourselves.  But  I  can  at 
least  do  two  things :  first  show  how  far  away  it  is 


[21] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

from  the  old  theology,  and  second,  as  Matthew 
Arnold  says,  throw  out  a  few  thoughts  at  it  that 
may  be  helpful  to  plain  people.  The  sugges- 
tions I  have  to  offer  are  only  hints  relating  to  a 
new  Theology  that  is  fast  coming  to  be  received. 


[22] 


II 

(K0D 

THE  new  theology  will  have  as  its  source  and 
center  the  infinite  love  of  God.  "  God  is 
love"  is  the  grandest  sentence  in  the  language.  It 
is  like  God  himself  in  its  simplicity  and  sublimity; 
three  words,  one  of  two  letters,  one  of  three,  and 
one  of  four,  but  he  who  knows  fully  this  truth 
knows  every  best  thing  and  enters  into  the  ful- 
ness of  life.  This  explains  everything.  This 
light  shines  into  all  darkness  and  brilliantly. 
Close  your  books;  leave  your  University;  learn 
this  and  be  blest  forever.  The  book  that  does 
not  contain  this,  the  University  that  is  not  based 
on  this,  write  on  them  "  Vanity  of  vanities,  all  is 
vanity." 

The  new  theology  will  give  itself  full  swing  in 
the  declaration  of  God's  love.     It  is  true  no  lan- 

03] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

guage  can  set  this  love  forth,  no  illustration  or 
comparison  can  fully  reveal  it.  The  utmost  ful- 
ness of  mother's  love  is  only  a  little  touch  of  it, 
the  great  rapture  of  lover's  love  does  not  ap- 
proach it.  Nothing  in  heaven  or  earth  or  under 
the  earth  can  fully  declare  the  love  of  God.  The 
whole  creation  is  an  effort  to  set  it  forth,  but  the 
sum  of  things  seen  and  known  can  not  do  it  com- 
pletely. God  only  knows  the  love  of  God,  and 
even  HE  can  not  tell  it  in  its  fulness.  These 
thoughts  are  most  rapturous.  That  an  infinite 
Being  controls  all  things,  and  that  the  center  of 
his  life  is  love  is  absolutely  final.  Irresistible 
power  moves  infinite  love,  and  infinite  love  guides 
irresistible  power  to  a  result  that  transcends  all 
human  thinking.  The  soul  that  has  grasped  this 
combination  of  ideas,  rests.  There  is  nothing 
further  to  be  sought  or  hoped  for,  rather  every- 
thing worth  seeking  or  hoping  for  is  contained  in 
this.  The  old  theology  vanishes  like  a  nightmare 
before  this  thought. 


[24] 


GOD 

But,  it  is  replied,  the  old  theology  taught  that 
God  is  love.  But  the  old  theology  said  God  is 
love  and  then  went  on  to  say  unspeakably  dread- 
ful things  about  God.  The  old  theology  said 
God  is  love,  but  it  taught  the  doctrine  of  Reproba- 
tion, and  how  many  different  kinds  of  a  liar 
the  doctrine  of  Reprobation  makes  the  dear  God 
to  be!  The  old  theology  preached  God  is  love 
in  the  morning,  and  the  endless  torment  of  Soc- 
rates and  Plato  in  the  afternoon.  If  Adam  had 
tried  to  think  the  worst  possible  thought  and  had 
kept  trying  till  the  present  moment,  he  could  not 
have  lighted  on  a  worse  thought  than  that  God 
would  send  an  infant  to  endless  torment  in  the 
flames  of  hell.  Yet  the  old  theologians  preached 
sermons  asserting  that.  If  they  were  to  do  it  to- 
day the  women  of  the  congregation  would  put 
them  out  on  the  curbstone  with  their  hats  well 
crusht  over  their  eyes. 

There  is  a  fine  expression  of  the  old  regime  in 
France,  "Noblesse  oblige."  It  means  that  no- 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

bility  itself  compels.  If  a  man  is  a  noble  he 
must  be  superior  to  the  rest;  he  must  be  true;  he 
must  be  gentle  and  courteous;  he  must  be  manly 
and  chivalrous;  he  must  be  altogether  pure  and 
noble.  The  reign  of  terror  came  to  France  be- 
cause the  nobility  completely  forgot  "Noblesse 
oblige,"  because  they  were  cruel,  tyrannous, 
deadly  in  their  selfishness. 

But  if  nobility  compels,  divinity  compels  still 
more.  Unquestionably  the  great  God  acknowl- 
edges absolutely  this  "Noblesse  oblige."  God, 
because  he  is  God,  must  be  the  most  pure  and 
the  most  patient,  the  most  gentle  and  the  most 
strong,  the  most  long-suffering  and  the  most 
helpful,  of  all  beings.  The  last  thing  that  it  is 
possible  for  God  to  do  is  one  mean  thing,  be- 
cause it  is  utterly  unworthy  of  himself,  and  re- 
pugnant to  his  nature.  St.  Francis  says,  "God 
is  always  courteous."  But  here  have  we  been 
under  the  old  theology  ascribing  the  most  atro- 
cious things  to  God.  It  is  mercifully  impossible 


[26] 


GOD 

for  us  to  enter  into  his  thought  about  this  mat- 
ter. God  is  infinitely  patient,  but  can  an  in- 
finite patience  endure  this?  The  shining  of  the 
sun  and  the  flashing  of  the  dew  show  God's  good- 
ness, but  not  like  this,  that  God  did  not  take  this 
man  preaching  that  God  would  damn  an  infant 
and  fling  him  where  he  would  never  be  found 
again  by  his  mourning  friends. 

It  is  a  common  reproach  cast  up  against  the 
teaching  that  God  is  love  that  it  means  God  is 
too  good  to  punish.  It  means  nothing  of  the 
sort.  Love  is  the  thing  that  punishes  wisely;  it 
will  not  let  any  wrong  be  done  without  opposi- 
tion and  chastisement.  But  it  will  certainly 
never  punish  after  the  stupid,  blundering  way 
of  the  old  theology,  a  way  against  which  con- 
science revolts  and  all  fine  feeling  bitterly  pro- 
tests. There  is  nothing  on  earth  more  admir- 
able and  wonderful  than  God's  punishment.  Sit 
down  by  Pharaoh  or  Nero  or  Borgia  and  hear  his 
story.  No  sleuth-hound  follows  the  scent  as 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

God's  punishment  follows  the  sin.  If  I  leave 
my  study  and  go  to  the  street  and  cuff  a  playing 
child  into  the  kennel,  my  punishment  mounts  the 
stair  quicker  than  I,  and  waits  for  me  at  the  top. 
My  heart  is  much  disturbed,  and  when  policeman 
No.  346  rings  the  door-bell  and  asks  to  see  the 
man  of  the  house,  I  know  what  he  wants  and  I 
do  not  want  to  see  him.  So  is  all  sin  and  pun- 
ishment from  the  flowing  blood  of  Abel  to  the 
last  crime  that  has  been  wrought  to-day. 

But  oh,  the  patience,  the  gentleness,  the  long- 
suffering  of  the  loving  God !  That  modern  proph- 
et, Thomas  Erskine  of  Linlathen,  wrote  to  his 
friend  Dr.  John  Brown,  "What  a  blest  and 
glad  thing  human  existence  would  be  if  we  fully 
realized  that  the  infinitely  powerful  and  infi- 
nitely wise  God  loves  each  one  of  us  with  an 
intensity  infinitely  beyond  what  the  most  fervid 
human  spirit  ever  felt  toward  another,  and  with 
a  concentration  as  if  he  had  none  else  to  think 
of."  Such  a  sentence  has  boundless  possibilities 

[28] 


GOD 

in  its  influence  over  the  soul  that  accepts  it.  One 
can  hardly  conceive  that  sorrow  or  sin  could  mas- 
ter it.  A  rapture  of  joy  is  its  only  legitimate 
issue.  It  is  delightful  to  think  that  that  rapture 
will  yet  fill  the  world  from  pole  to  pole.  And 
yet  it  will  be  only  believing  that  God  means  what 
he  says.  Clemens  Alexandrinus  states  it  well: 
"The  purified  soul  in  the  grandeur  of  contem- 
plation embraces  not  the  divine  in  a  mirror  or 
through  a  glass,  but  feasts  eternally  upon  the 
vision  in  all  its  clearness,  that  vision  with  which 
the  soul  smitten  with  boundless  love  can  never 
be  satiated,  and  enjoys  an  inexhaustible  glad- 
ness for  endless  ages,  honored  by  a  permanent 
continuance  in  all  excellence."  Here  is  the  very 
heart  of  all  religion  in  every  land  and  age.  Her- 
bert Spencer  says,  "The  Ultimate  Reality  is  the 
sole  existence."  But  how  much  this  adds,  that 
it  is  an  existence  of  infinite  love.  An  existence 
of  infinite  love  is  the  one  necessary  thing,  the  sole 
reality.  But  the  old  theology  had  no  room  for 

[29] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

these  magnificent  thoughts.  It  is  very  much 
harder  for  me  to  believe  the  infinite  love  of  God 
because  I  was  trained  in  the  old  theology,  but  is 
this  what  theology  is  for?  The  little  girl  who 
was  naughty  and  was  told  that  God  saw  and  had 
written  it  down,  cried,  "I  know  it,  he's  always 
getting  mad  at  something," — a  natural  inference. 
Browning  says  truly  of  such  a  God — 

"For  the  loving  worm  within  his  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  God." 

Love  has  been  well  called  the  divinest  thing  in 
the  world,  but  a  God  full  of  love,  that  is  by  far 
the  best  of  all.  Every  noble  and  beautiful  thing 
in  nature,  history,  society,  music,  painting,  poe- 
try, eloquence,  patriotism,  fatherhood,  mother- 
hood, infancy,  and  age  is  a  revelation  of  God; 
every  lovely  sight,  sweet  sound,  high  thought, 
noble  deed,  happy  memory,  and  delightful  hope 
is  a  revelation  of  the  love  of  God.  God's  love 
being  true  and  the  one  great  truth,  all  things  on 
the  whole  are  better,  nobler,  grander,  richer, 

[30] 


GOD 

more  hopeful,  more  glorious  than  any  one  has  ever 
thought,  and  we  might  well,  if  we  had  no  other 
way  to  show  our  delight,  sing  and  laugh  and 
dance  and  praise  God  all  the  days. 

We  must  continually  remember,  because  we 
have  not  been  sufficiently  taught  it,  how  central 
and  fundamental  love  is.  James  Freeman 
Clarke  writes:  "That  which  makes  this  earth 
seem  solid  is  not  the  rocks  and  mountains  in  it, 
but  the  love  in  it.  The  longer  we  live  in  love, 
the  more  beautiful  the  world  becomes,  the  more 
rich  and  precious  life  seems.  As  we  live  on  we 
seem  to  grow  younger,  not  older.  It  is  the  young 
who  are  oftenest  tired  of  life;  the  good  old  man 
wonders  that  he  could  ever  have  been  weary  of 
life.  He  feels  the  infinite  riches  of  the  universe 
and  thanks  God  in  the  depths  of  a  happy  heart 
for  the  gift  of  life."  We  can  say  for  humanity, 
Wanted  God,  and  only  God  and  God  forever. 
The  touch  of  God  is  life  to  the  soul.  God  is  to 
the  soul  as  sunshine  is  to  flowers.  God  is  to  the 

[31] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

soul  as  air  is  to  the  lungs.  Atheism,  even  agnos- 
ticism is  suffocation.  Sin  itself  seems  to  wilt  and 
die  before  the  love  of  God.  Touched  by  it  the 
harlot  becomes  the  Magdalene,  and  the  drunkard 
in  our  own  day  becomes  John  B.  Gough,  at 
whose  feet  millions  sit  delighted.  Here  is  the  true 
God.  "In  him  is  light  and  in  him  is  no  darkness 
at  all."  In  him  is  life  and  in  him  is  no  death  at 
all.  In  him  is  love  and  in  him  is  no  hatred  at 
all.  This  is  the  absolute  religion.  Nothing  can 
rise  higher  than  this.  Here  we  rest. 

In  spite  of  all  our  moods  and  frames  God  is 
ever  this.  It  has  been  said  that  it  is  winter  not 
because  the  sun  changes,  but  because  the  earth 
turns  away  from  the  sun;  when  it  turns  back 
summer  comes  quickly  again.  So  the  winter  of 
the  soul  comes  not  because  God  changes  but  be- 
cause our  souls  turn  away  from  him.  When  they 
turn  back,  then  "is  the  winter  of  our  discontent 
made  glorious  summer"  by  his  coming.  And 
the  truth  that  needs  deeply  to  be  imprest  on  all 

[32] 


GOD 

our  hearts  is  that  we  can  have  all  this  fulness  of 
life  and  blessing  here  and  now.  It  is  not  the 
beatific  vision  of  God  in  heaven  that  we  want 
now,  but  the  beatific  vision  of  God  in  New  York, 
Chicago,  Paris,  and  London.  "Thou  satisfiest 
the  desire  of  every  living  thing." 


[33] 


Ill 


HAVING  darkened  for  us  the  beautiful  face  of 
God,  the  old  theology  went  on  to  confuse 
and  disturb  our  knowledge  of  and  delight  in  Jesus 
Christ,  his  Son.  Evidently  one  of  the  dearest  de- 
sires of  the  Lord  Jesus  was  that  his  church  might 
be  one,  and  that  he  himself  might  be  the  special 
bond  of  unity.  How  distressing  it  must  be  to  his 
exalted  nature  that  the  theologians  have  contrived 
to  make  himself  the  special  cause  of  division,  from 
the  days  of  the  sad  Council  of  Nice  to  this  last 
Council  in  New  York  where  three  of  the  best  of 
our  citizens  had  the  doors  shut  in  their  faces  be- 
cause of  difficulties  about  the  Trinity.  As  the 
scholastic  theologian  sits,  like  Marius  in  the 
ruins  of  Carthage,  amid  a  torn  and  divided 
church  that  his  Master  prayed  might  be  one,  he 

[34] 


JESUS    CHRIST 


ought  to  realize  feelingly  what  a  blunder  he  has 
made. 

One  of  the  chief  marks  of  the  greatness  and 
goodness  of  the  Lord  Jesus  is  that  men  love  him 
so  much  in  spite  of  all  that  the  Scholastics  have 
said  and  done  about  him.  And  some  of  the 
worst  of  this  saying  and  doing  has  been  in  the 
Councils  themselves.  Dean  Milman  hi  his 
Church  History  says,  "A  general  Council  was 
a  field  of  battle.  Men  met  with  all  the  excite- 
ment, the  estrangement,  the  jealousy,  the  an- 
tipathy engendered  by  fierce  conflict.  Each 
bishop  was  committed  to  his  own  opinion  and 
was  exasperated  by  opposition.  They  tried  to 
triumph  over  their  adversaries  rather  than  dis- 
passionately to  seek  the  truth."  Gregory  Na- 
zianzen,  a  church  father  of  high  name  and  sanc- 
tity, writes:  "I  have  never  known  an  assembly  of 
bishops  to  terminate  well.  They  strive  only  for 
power,  they  behave  like  angry  lions  to  the  small 
and  like  fawning  spaniels  to  the  great.  It  would 

[35] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

seem  as  tho  a  herald  had  convoked  to  the  Coun- 
cil all  the  gluttons,  villains,  liars  and  false  swear- 
ers of  the  Empire.  I  will  never  more  sit  in  these 
assemblies  of  cranes  and  geese."  It  is  no  won- 
der that  such  an  assembly  would  throw  the  Church 
into  confusion  worse  confounded,  just  as  has 
happened.  Erasmus  writes,  "Synods  and  de- 
crees and  Councils  are  by  no  means  the  fittest 
modes  of  repressing  error  unless  truth  depends 
simply  on  authority.  On  the  contrary,  the  more 
dogmas  there  are,  the  more  fruitful  is  the  ground 
for  producing  heresies.  Never  was  the  Christian 
Church  purer  nor  more  undefiled  than  when  the 
world  was  content  with  a  single  creed,  and  that 
the  shortest  creed  we  have." 

And  I  quite  fail  to  see  why  such  a  dust  should 
be  raised  about  this  matter  of  the  relation  be- 
tween God  the  Father  and  his  Son.  Every  one 
agrees  that  the  one  great  idea  of  Sonship  is  one- 
ness of  nature.  A  son  is  of  the  same  nature  as 
his  father.  And  man  being  a  son  of  God,  as  is 

[36] 


JESUS    CHRIST 


well  understood,  the  supreme  Man  must  be  the 
supreme  Son  of  God.  But  when  the  theologians 
said  that  the  Son  was  equal  in  power  and  glory 
with  the  Father,  they  simply  gave  the  lie  to  the 
Son  himself  who  said,  and  all  his  life  confirmed 
it,  "My  Father  is  greater  than  I."  The  theo- 
logians have  made  Jesus  himself  do  what  he 
charges  us  not  to  do,  to  take  to  ourselves  the 
highest  place,  "lest  a  more  honorable  man  than 
thou  come."  And  the  commended  confession 
was  Simon  Peter's,  "Thou  art  the  Christ,  the 
Son  of  the  living  God."  Why  not  leave  it  thus? 
Proverbs  contain  a  great  deal  of  downright 
common  sense.  They  are  wisdom  and  wit 
combined.  There  is  one  very  homely  proverb, 
"You  must  not  look  a  gift  horse  in  the  mouth." 
It  is  improper  and  discourteous  to  discuss  the 
value  of  a  gift.  If  this  morsel  of  wisdom  had 
been  received  by  the  theologians  they  would  have 
saved  themselves  much  sorrow  and  the  Church  a 
world  of  trouble.  When  God  gave  to  the  world 

[37] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

what  the  Apostle  Paul  calls  his  "unspeakable 
gift,"  the  theologians  turned  at  once  with  much 
acrimony  to  do  the  forbidden  thing  and  to  ex- 
communicate all  who  rated  the  gift  at  a  different 
valuation  from  their  own.  I  for  one  confess  that 
I  have  no  two-foot  rule  to  measure  the  stature  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  I  believe  he  was  not 
given  to  us  to  measure  his  stature,  much  less  to 
divide  the  church  and  cast  out  noble  souls  be- 
cause their  feet  and  inches  are  not  just  the  same 
as  our  own;  but  he  was  given  to  us  that  we 
should  walk  in  his  steps  and  love  one  another  as 
he  loved  us.  But  we  have  flown  in  the  face  of 
every  divine  precept,  and  all  the  divine  example 
of  Jesus,  in  our  miserable  and  age-long  quarrel 
about  the  divinity  of  Jesus.  Nothing  divine  has 
come  from  that.  Dean  Fremantle  gives  a  very 
impressive  word,  "Faith  has  suffered  more  from 
over-definition  than  from  indefiniteness."  And 
when  we  think  of  the  wild  fury  and  passion,  the 
war  and  blood  and  thousandfold  death  like  the 

[38] 


JESUS   CHRIST 


battle  of  wolves  and  tigers,  we  feel  that  his  words 
are  true.  Calvin  himself  wished  that  the  word 
Trinity  might  be  buried  in  oblivion,  I  think  it 
is  Augustine  who  says,  "I  can  not  tell  how  my 
soul  and  body  are  joined  together,  and  yet  that  is 
my  very  self."  If  that  be  so  what  likelihood  is 
there  that  we  can  analyze  divinity?  And  the 
utter  confusion  and  disorder  and  bitter  strife  that 
have  resulted  from  this  business  should  teach  us 
how  far  we  have  erred. 

When  we  turn  from  this  most  arrogant  and 
divisive  contention  to  the  Lord  Jesus  himself,  all 
is  beautiful  and  glorious,  and  all  true  men  can 
bow  before  him.  What  we  believe  is  not  a  book 
nor  a  creed  but  a  Person.  Mr.  Lecky  writes, 
"It  may  be  truly  said  that  the  simple  record  of 
three  short  years  of  human  life  has  done  more 
to  regenerate  and  soften  mankind  than  all  the 
disquisitions  of  philosophers  and  all  the  exhorta- 
tions of  moralists."  And  in  Daniel  Webster's 
Private  Confession  of  Faith  we  read,  "I  believe 

[39] 


1 

WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

that  the  experiments  and  the  subtleties  of  human 
wisdom  are  more  likely  to  obscure  than  to  en- 
lighten the  revealed  will  of  God;  and  that  he  is 
the  most  accomplished  scholar  who  has  been  edu- 
cated at  the  feet  of  Jesus  and  in  the  college  of 
fishermen." 

About  the  person  of  Jesus  all  men  of  the  most 
diverse  views  gather  with  devoted  reverence. 
Renan  writes,  "To  tear  the  name  of  Jesus  from 
the  world  would  be  to  shake  it  from  its  very 
foundations."  That  sounds  more  Christian  than 
many  things  the  Scholastics  have  said.  I  should 
want  to  claim  that  man,  to  draw  him  into  the 
home,  not  to  fling  him  from  the  door. 

It  is  a  profound  word  of  Dean  Stanley's, 
"  When  Bishop  Pearson  in  his  work  on  the  Creed 
vindicates  the  divinity  of  Christ  without  the  men- 
tion of  any  of  those  moral  qualities  by  which  he 
has  bowed  down  the  world  before  him,  his  grasp 
on  the  doctrine  is  far  feebler  than  that  of  Rous- 
seau or  Mill,  who  seized  the  very  attributes  which 

[40] 


JESUS    CHRIST 


constitute  the  marrow  and  essence  of  his  nature." 
Robert  Browning  in  a  letter  quotes  with  much  ap- 
proval the  saying  of  Charles  Lamb,  when  with  a 
few  friends  he  was  imagining  what  they  would  do 
were  the  great  heroes  of  the  world  to  enter  the 
room  at  that  moment.  Some  one  asked,  "  What 
if  Jesus  should  enter  ?"  Lamb  at  once  altered 
the  light  and  jocose  tone  of  his  voice  and  said 
with  deep  solemnity,  "If  Shakespeare  were  to 
enter  we  should  all  rise  and  greet  him  with  the 
greatest  reverence,  but  if  Jesus  Christ  were  to 
enter,  we  must  all  kneel." 

And  wonderfully  this  profound  reverence  has 
centered  about  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  is 
hard  for  us  to  realize  the  shame  and  ignominy 
that  the  cross  meant  in  the  days  of  Jesus.  It  is 
one  of  the  marvels  of  history  that  Jesus  has  made 
the  emblem  of  a  slave's  degradation  the  symbol 
of  the  highest  honor  and  dignity  of  the  world, 
surmounting  everywhere  stately  cathedrals  and 
emperor's  crowns.  About  this  slave's  shame 

[41] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

bow  all  the  wisdom  and  power  and  glory  of  the 
world.  Romanes  says,  "The  entire  story  of  the 
cross  is  by  far  the  most  magnificent  presentation 
in  history.  Only  to  a  man  wholly  destitute  of 
spiritual  perception  can  it  be  that  Christianity 
should  fail  to  appear  the  greatest  exhibition  of 
the  beautiful  and  the  sublime  and  of  all  else  that 
appeals  to  our  spiritual  nature,  which  has  ever 
been  known  upon  earth."  And  Mr.  Emerson 
says  of  the  Crucifixion,  "This  great  defeat  is 
hitherto  our  highest  fact.11  We  may  well  believe 
that  the  cross  of  Christ  is  the  greatest  exhibition 
of  the  divine  love  that  this  world  has  ever  known. 
And  may  it  not  be  that  it  is  an  exhibition  of  what 
the  great  God  is  doing  in  all  worlds,  sacrificing 
himself  for  his  children  in  any  way  that  it  were 
wise  and  kind  for  him  to  do.  We  may  suppose 
that  there  is  something  resembling  the  cross  in 
every  inhabited  world;  that  God  has  made  in 
every  such  world  a  demonstration  of  his  love  and 
sympathy  that  is  the  greatest  power  of  uplift  in 

[42] 


JESUS    CHRIST 


that  world.  The  benevolent  nature  that  has 
tasted  once  the  joy  of  doing  good  on  the  largest 
scale  must  continue  it,  and  he  who  has  known 
in  this  world  the  hidden,  deep-lying  joy  of  the 
cross,  surely  will  he  not  under  the  compulsion  of 
this  principle  be  exhibiting  that  same  self-sacri- 
fice in  other  worlds,  how  many  none  can  tell? 
We  may  be  sure  of  this,  that  the  cross  exhibits 
some  of  the  very  deepest  qualities  of  the  divine 
nature  and  that,  had  we  been  deprived  of  the 
cross,  we  should  have  lost  much,  and  of  the  best, 
of  our  knowledge  of  God.  And  it  is  a  revelation 
in  the  way  of  tenderness  and  sympathy  that 
reaches  the  lowest  as  well  as  the  highest,  the 
hovel  as  well  as  the  palace  or  the  University.  It 
has  written  its  story  very  deeply  in  the  hearts  and 
lives  of  the  common  people.  It  has  affected  all 
their  traditions,  their  songs,  their  speech.  The 
Bretons  call  the  aspen,  "The  Trembler,"  and 
say  it  was  the  wood  of  which  the  cross  was 
made  and  has  trembled  ever  since  Christ  hung 

[43] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

upon  it.  And  I  think,  joyfully  leaving  out  of 
view  incomprehensible  and  divisive  doctrines 
like  the  Trinity,  we  can  all  join  in  Paul's  ardent 
words,  "He  humbled  himself  and  became  obedi- 
ent unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross.  Where- 
fore God  also  hath  highly  exalted  him  and  given 
him  a  name  that  is  above  every  name,  that  at 
the  name  of  Jesus  every  knee  should  bow  of 
things  in  heaven  and  things  in  earth  and  things 
under  the  earth."  Yes,  we  take  the  words  from 
the  lips  of  Charles  Lamb,  and  when  Jesus  Christ 
comes  we  shall  all,  Unitarian  with  Roman  Catho- 
lic, Jew  with  Gentile,  we  shall  all  kneel. 


[44] 


IV 


I  HAVE  the  greatest  hesitation  in  writing  this 
section  of  my  treatise.  If  I  considered  my 
own  interest  I  certainly  should  not  write  it  at  all. 
There  are  many  who  have  followed  me  with  a 
great  deal  of  acquiescence  so  far,  who  may  pause 
now.  I  fear  that  my  Presbytery,  which  has  been 
very  forbearing  with  me,  may  feel  that  this  is 
passing  the  bounds.  But  there  are  two  reasons 
that  compel  me  to  write:  first,  because  I  think 
that  it  is  true;  and  second,  because  if  true,  it  is  a 
most  interesting  and  delightful  truth,  changing 
in  a  marvelous  way  our  view  of  God  and  life  and 
of  the  whole  sum  of  things. 

The  old  theology  taught  concerning  man  that 
God  made  him  from  the  dust  of  the  ground  and 
placed  him  in  a  delightful  garden.  Out  of  man's 

[45] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

side  God  took  a  rib  and  from  it  he  made  woman. 
In  the  garden  were  two  trees.  If  man  ate  of  one 
of  them  he  would  live  forever;  if,  of  the  other, 
he  would  die  forever.  A  serpent  spoke  to  the 
woman  and  tempted  her  to  eat  of  the  forbidden 
tree.  She  ate  and  gave  the  fruit  to  the  man  who 
ate  with  her.  Upon  this  followed  the  stupendous 
penalty  that  they  and  all  their  descendants  be- 
came totally  depraved  and  must  be  consigned  to 
fearful  tortures  of  fire  and  brimstone  for  endless 
ages.  This  is  a  most  terrible  presentation  of  the 
history  and  character  and  destiny  of  man.  A 
tremendous  burden  of  proof  rests  upon  the  old 
theologians.  The  burden  of  proof  rests  not  upon 
us  for  rejecting  it,  for  its  very  nature  is  full  of 
reason  for  doubting  it,  large  reason  for  utterly  re- 
jecting it.  No  ordinary  foundation  can  bear  up 
such  a  dreadful  superstructure  as  this.  What  then 
is  its  foundation  ?  It  is  an  old  document,  vener- 
able for  its  antiquity  and  always  to  be  highly  cher- 
ished as  ancient  literature — the  book  of  Genesis. 

[46] 


MAN 


First  we  remark  that  if  we  had  lighted  in  our 
reading  upon  a  serpent  that  talked  and  a  tree 
that  could  give  eternal  life  or  eternal  death,  we 
would  conclude  at  once  that  this  was  a  myth  or 
fable  designed,  perhaps,  to  give  moral  teaching, 
but  not  to  be  considered  historical  fact.  But 
further,  however  interesting  this  book  of  Gene- 
sis may  be  and  is  as  an  ancient  writing,  its  au- 
thority as  history  has  been  for  a  long  time  passing 
away.  I  can  well  remember  when  it  was  con- 
sidered a  most  serious  heresy  to  doubt  that  Noah's 
deluge  was  universal.  A  man  was  called  an  in- 
fidel who  dared  to  say  it  was  partial.  Unques- 
tionably the  record  means  that  it  was  universal, 
but  we  now  believe  that  it  was  partial.  I  can 
still  better  remember  how  the  geologists  were 
furiously  assailed  when  they  asserted  that  the 
world  had  been  thousands  of  years  and  not  six 
days  in  the  making.  Livingstone  asked  an  op- 
ponent of  Geology  where  the  shells  in  the  rocks 
came  from.  He  answered,  "When  God  made 

[47] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

the  rocks  he  made  the  shells  in  them."  A  book 
was  published  called  "Popular  Geology  subver- 
sive of  Divine  Revelation."  This  is  one  utter- 
ance of  the  book:  "Certainly  of  all  the  lately  dis- 
covered sciences  which  the  enemy  of  God  and 
man  has  thus  pushed  to  his  destroying  ends,  no 
one  has  been  so  appropriate  to  his  purpose  or  has 
been  so  assiduously  driven  forward  to  the  accom- 
plishment of  his  aims  as  the  popular  new  science 
of  Geology.  To  enumerate  all  the  infernal  ar- 
tillery which  the  subtle  enemy  of  God  and  man 
has  put  into  the  hands  of  his  vassals  to  aim  at  the 
everlasting  monument  of  revealed  truth  would 
require  his  own  unspent  breath  and  unwearied 
tongue."  This  blast  ought  to  have  finally  ended 
Geology,  but  it  seems  that  it  did  not.  No  one 
reads  this  fierce  book  now,  but  millions  are  study- 
ing Geology  to-day. 

The  record  of  Genesis  distinctly  says  that  the 
world  was  made  in  six  days.  When  Geology  had 
firmly  established  itself,  most  heroic  efforts  were 

[48] 


MAN 


put  forth  to  show  that  the  days  of  Genesis  were 
long  periods  of  time — about  which  explanation 
it  would  be  interesting  to  hear  the  comment  of 
the  original  author  of  Genesis.  To  him,  doubt- 
less, the  days  were  days  and  nothing  else,  and  the 
seventh  day  the  day  that  became  the  Jewish 
Sabbath  and  nothing  else. 

Again,  students  of  human  history  have  discov- 
ered that  man  has  been  thousands  upon  thou- 
sands of  years  an  inhabitant  of  the  earth.  They 
were  assailed  as  infidels,  but  the  intelligent  world 
has  come  to  believe  that  man  has  lived  here  for 
long  periods  of  time,  far  beyond  the  notion  of  the 
book  of  Genesis. 

Again,  some  centuries  ago  there  came  one  of 
God's  great  revelations  through  the  minds  of 
Copernicus  and  Galileo.  This  revolutionized 
all  man's  thinking  about  the  great  system  of  the 
worlds.  These  prophets  who  were  stoned  for 
their  contradiction  of  the  book  of  Genesis  taught 
us  the  wonders  of  modern  astronomy.  For  this 

[49] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

Copernicus  was  condemned  to  seclusion  and  si- 
lence, and  only  published  his  great  work  as  he 
was  on  his  death-bed.  Galileo,  with  bended 
knees  and  with  his  hand  upon  the  Gospels,  was 
compelled  to  pronounce  the  following  words,  "I 
abjure,  curse,  and  detest  the  error  and  heresy  of 
the  motion  of  the  earth,  and  promise  that  I  will 
never  teach  verbally  or  in  writing  that  the  sun  is 
the  center  of  the  universe  and  immovable,  and 
that  the  earth  is  not  the  center  of  the  universe 
and  movable."  But  all  this  did  not  stop  the 
movement  of  the  earth,  and  Galileo  did  not  seem 
to  think  it  would,  for  as  he  rose  from  his  knees  he 
murmured,  "It  still  moves."  And  so  far  as  I 
have  heard  it  is  moving  yet. 

In  all  these  particulars  we  have  made  our  prog- 
ress in  the  way  of  modern  knowledge  in  opposi- 
tion to,  and  really  in  spite  of,  the  book  of  Genesis. 

Of  late  there  has  come  a  much  more  important 
departure  from  the  teaching  of  that  book.  For 
these  other  matters  were  in  the  realm  of  nature, 

[50] 


MAN 


and  this  is  in  the  realm  of  man — and  therefore 
touches  us  much  more  nearly.  The  theory  of 
Evolution  teaches  that  man  has  developed  up- 
ward— that  he  bears  in  his  very  frame  the  marks 
of  his  intimate  association  with  lower  orders  of 
life,  and  that,  instead  of  a  single  day  of  creation, 
immense  periods  have  been  occupied  in  the  slow 
process  of  development  by  which  he  is  moving 
forward  to-day  with  the  same  steady  progress  as 
thousands  of  years  ago.  As  the  theory  of  Evolu- 
tion stands  to-day  received  in  all  our  colleges  and 
universities  it  takes  its  place  as  one  of  the  very 
grandest  products  of  human  thought  and  inves- 
tigation that  the  world  has  ever  known.  But  it 
is  distinctly  opposed  to  the  story  of  the  book  of 
Genesis. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  great  leaders  of 
thought  who  worked  out  the  theory  of  Evolu- 
tion builded  better  than  they  knew.  They  little 
thought  when  they  were  patiently  seeking  the 
facts  as  to  man's  history,  the  cold,  scientific  facts, 

[51] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

that  they  were  taking  part  as  well  in  a  great  the- 
ological movement  that  was  beginning  in  the  re- 
ligious world — that  they  were  helping  to  deliver 
their  fellow  men  from  a  cruel  bondage  under 
which  they  had  suffered  for  ages.  They  were 
called  infidels  and  atheists  but  were  really  doing 
a  great  religious  work,  while  their  theological 
opponents  were  doing  their  best  to  injure  true 
religion.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  two  great 
movements  have  been  going  forward  together  and 
have  been  mutually  helpful — science  and  the  high- 
er criticism — doing  one  of  the  greatest  works  of 
all  history.  And  thankful  may  we  be  who  live 
at  such  a  time  as  this  when  so  much  light  is  break- 
ing forth  in  the  realms  of  science  and  theology. 

We  see  thus  how  once  and  again  and  again  the 
story  of  Genesis  as  to  the  creation  and  origin  of 
man  has  been  contradicted  by  the  patient  inves- 
tigation of  earnest  and  laborious  and  intelligent 
men,  the  results  of  whose  labors  are  received  to- 
day in  all  our  halls  of  learning.  And  yet  the  third 

[52] 


MAN 


chapter  of  the  book  of  Genesis  is  the  basis  on 
which  has  been  erected  the  whole  terrible  scho- 
lastic theology.  This  dreadful  combination — 
the  fall  of  man  in  Adam,  the  utter  corruption  and 
total  depravity  of  the  race,  and  the  endless  tor- 
ment of  millions  upon  millions  of  our  fellow  men — 
hangs  upon  the  third  chapter  of  the  book  of  Gene- 
sis. Was  there  ever  such  an  unspeakably  hor- 
rible combination?  Was  there  ever  so  frail  and 
feeble  a  foundation  ? 

Now,  putting  away  prejudice  and  the  influence 
of  early  training,  it  becomes  us  carefully  to  bal- 
ance these  two  theories.  The  one  is  the  theory 
based  on  a  story  with  the  look  of  a  fable  and  on 
a  writing  that  has  been  again  and  again  proved 
to  be  mistaken  as  to  certain  great  facts  of  history. 
The  other  is  the  theory  that  is  practically  ac- 
cepted by  educated  men  to-day,  that  man  has 
come  to  his  place  in  this  world  by  a  long  process 
of  growth  and  evolution,  which  devout  men  be- 
lieve to  be  one  of  the  greatest  marvels  of  God's 

[53] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

handiwork.  When  we  have  carefully  consid- 
ered which  opinion  is  likely  to  be  true,  that  of  the 
old  theology  or  of  evolution,  it  surely  adds  an 
amazing  zest  and  relish  to  our  reception  of  the 
newer  opinion  that  it  sweeps  away  as  by  a 
magician's  wand  this  terrible  combination — the 
Fall,  total  depravity,  and  endless  torment — the 
greatest  burden  that  humanity  has  ever  known. 
By  the  teaching  of  evolution  it  is  a  grotesque 
blunder  to  call  man  a  fallen  being.  He  is  prob- 
ably the  best  example  of  a  rising  being  anywhere 
to  be  found.  The  one  thing  he  has  been  doing 
for  ages  is  to  rise.  He  has  risen  from  the  merest 
microscopic  life  to  glorious  manhood — he  has 
risen  from  the  low,  the  bestial,  the  utterly  self- 
ish nature  that  eats  its  own  progeny,  to  a  high, 
wise,  self-sacrificing,  entirely  devoted  and  in- 
spired spiritual  life,  to  becoming  partaker  of  a 
divine  nature,  and  sharing  in  a  true  sense  the 
very  life  of  God;  he  has  risen  to  the  true  man- 
hood, Son  of  Man  and  Son  of  God.  One  word 

[54] 


MAN 


is  peculiarly  true  of  him,  the  Easter  word,  "He 
is  risen  indeed."  I  can  fancy  some  mighty  angel 
telling  his  comrades  the  wondrous  story  of  man's 
age-long  rise,  closing  with  the  words,  "And  he 
calls  himself  a  fallen  creature."  This  must  add 
to  the  hilarity  of  heaven. 

And  with  the  departure  of  the  dogma  of  the 
fall  of  man  go  the  dogmas  of  total  depravity 
and  endless  torment.  The  old  theology  taught 
the  doctrine  of  total  depravity  in  its  largest  sweep 
because  it  was  a  logical  deduction  from  the  fall, 
and  everything  must  yield  to  logic.  They  for- 
got Luther's  word,  "Away  with  logicians,  when 
we  must  believe  fishermen."  By  the  logic  of  the 
system,  even  infants  shared  this  full  depravity 
and  went  to  hell  with  the  rest.  The  most  wise 
and  witty  comment  that  I  ever  heard  on  this  con- 
clusion was  that  of  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 
He  refers  to  such  monstrous  words  as  these  of 
Calvin  ("  Institutes,"  II.  i.  8) :  "  Altho  infants  have 
not  yet  produced  the  fruits  of  their  own  unright- 

[55] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

eousness,  they  have  the  seed  planted  in  them- 
selves; nay,  their  whole  nature  is,  as  it  were,  a 
seed-bed  of  sin,  and  therefore  can  not  but  be  odi- 
ous and  abominable  to  God."  He  then  adds 
the  beautiful  words  of  Jesus,  "  Suffer  the  little 
children  to  come  unto  me  and  forbid  them  not, 
for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven";  and 
asks,  "  Do  you  mean,  John  Calvin,  that  Heaven 
lies  about  us  in  our  infancy?" 

The  modern  view  of  non- elected  infants  is  well 
given  in  Albert  Lancaster's  lines : 

An  "unelected  infant"  sighed  out  its  little  breath, 
And  wandered  thro'  the  darkness  along  the  shores  of  death 
Until  the  gates  of  heaven  agleam  with  pearl  it  spied, 
And  ran  to  them  and  clung  there  and  would  not  be  denied. 
At  last  the  gates  were  opened;  a  man  with  features  mild 
Stooped  down  and  raised  the  weeping  and  unelected  child. 
Immortal  light  thrilled  softly  from  avenues  of  bliss 
As  on  the  infant's  forehead  the  spirit  placed  a  kiss. 
"Who  are  you,  thus  to  hallow  my  unelected  brow?" 
"Dear  child,  my  name  was  Calvin,  but  I  see  things  better 
now." 

Further  than  this,  the  old  theology  taught  us 
that  this  world  and  race  of  ours  was  under  a 

[56] 


MAN 


curse.    This  world  is  a  vale  of  tears  and  a  wil- 
derness of  wo. 

"Through  sorrow's  night  and  danger's  path, 

Amid  the  deepening  gloom 

We  servants  of  an  injured  King 

Are  marching  to  the  tomb." 

"The  few  lurid  mornings  that  dawn  on  us  here 
Are  enough  for  life's  wo,  full  enough  for  its  cheer." 

"This  world  is  all  a  fleeting  show 
For  man's  delusion  given." 

And  death  was  darkest  of  all,  a  horrid  specter 
to  terrify  mankind. 

"Hark,  from  the  tombs  a  doleful  sound. 

Mine  ears  attend  the  cry. 
Ye  living  men,  come  view  the  ground 
Where  ye  must  shortly  lie." 

Professor  Park  used  to  tell  with  great  gusto  the 
story  of  Dr.  West  of  Stockbridge,  who  was  in  his 
day  one  of  New  England's  leading  clergymen. 
Professor  Kirkland,  when  a  student,  was  taught 
by  him,  and  taught  the  horrible  system  as  it  is 
seldom  taught  now.  He  would  hear  it  all  in  the 

[57] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

study,  and  then  come  out  to  the  beautiful  sun- 
shine and  look  over  the  lovely  Stockbridge  valley 
and  say,  "  God  is  good  in  spite  of  what  old  West 
says."  The  Gospel  is  sunshine  in  the  open  air; 
the  old  theology  is  a  smoking  candle  in  a  dark 
cellar.  Blow  it  out,  wet  the  cinder,  and  come 
out  into  the  sunlight!  When  we  hear  the  laugh- 
ter of  children  and  see  the  beauty  of  flowers  and 
the  glory  of  sunsets,  we  feel  sure  it  was  all  a  mon- 
strous blunder. 

"If  we  poor  souls  involved  in  our  own  cloud 
Deem  the  wide  world  lies  darkling  in  a  shroud, 
Raving,  the  world  holds  no  felicity ! 
One  child's  clear  laughter  may  rebuke  the  lie." 

How  grateful  is  the  teaching  that  man  has  not 
fallen  into  such  a  corruption  that  the  world  must 
be  curst  for  him,  but  rather  has  risen  from  igno- 
rance and  sensuality  to  a  condition  in  which  he 
can  enjoy  all  this  beautiful  world  and  help  to 
make  it  more  beautiful  and  happy  under  the  smile 
of  a  most  loving  God. 

[58] 


MAN 


And  as  for  death  itself,  which  the  old  theology 
made  so  dreadful,  the  truth  is  that  if  we  live  as 
God  meant  us  to  live,  death  is  a  priceless  boon, 
a  freedom  from  the  infirmities  and  limitations  of 
the  flesh,  a  graduation  to  a  higher  school,  an  en- 
trance into  a  most  exalted  spiritual  society,  a  rap- 
ture of  reunion  with  deeply  loved  ones  gone  be- 
fore, a  new  nearness  and  vision  of  God  himself, 
in  short  by  far  the  most  delightful  experience  the 
soul  has  ever  yet  enjoyed,  to  be  followed  by  larger 
and  fuller  revelations.  As  dying  Bunsen  said, 
alt  is  sweet  to  die,"  and  as  John  Howe  wrote, 
"  Thank  God,  no  one  can  rob  us  of  the  glorious 
privilege  of  dying." 

Men  have  long  strained  themselves  over  the 
problem  of  the  origin  of  evil,  with  no  satisfying 
results.  May  it  not  be  because  it  never  had  an 
origin?  Topsy  " never  was  born,  never  had  a 
father,  never  had  a  mother,  just  growed" — and 
evil  has  done  the  same,  only  it  has  grown  less.  It 
is  itself  the  lower  and  worse  thing  that  has  been 

[59] 


WANTED-A   THEOLOGY 

put  away,  sloughed  off  in  the  movement  of  the 
ages.  What  is  wrong  in  a  man  is  not  wrong  in 
a  dog  or  tiger.  What  is  wrong  in  a  civilized  man 
is  not  wrong  in  a  savage.  Savages  to-day  are  re- 
minders to  us  of  what  our  fathers  were.  The 
old  arguments  in  favor  of  polygamy  and  slavery 
failed  here.  Because  Abraham  and  David  had 
wives  and  slaves  we  should  have  the  same.  Oh, 
no!  They  had  them,  but  we  should  not  have 
them.  Because  Samuel  hewed  Agag  to  pieces 
before  the  Lord,  some  of  the  Scotch  Covenanters 
said,  "Hew  Archbishop  Sharp  to  pieces,"  and 
they  did  it  thoroughly,  but  they  made  a  miserable 
mistake. 

With  a  movement  like  the  movement  of  the 
spheres,  grossness,  cruelty,  animality,  are  going. 
The  brawn  is  growing  weaker,  perhaps,  tho  that 
is  doubtful,  but  the  brain  is  growing  stronger. 
Pharaoh  and  Nero  have  had  their  day — this  cen- 
tury would  electrocute  them.  To  say  that  man 
is  totally  depraved — prone  to  all  evil  and  averse 

[60] 


MAN 


from  all  good — is  simply  an  atrocious  falsehood. 
It  is  a  statement  after  the  manner  of  Baron 
Munchausen.  He  would  admire  it,  but  not  dare 
to  parallel  it,  as  being  quite  beyond  him.  I  deny 
the  doctrine  and  I  resent  it.  After  an  experience 
with  my  brother  men  of  nearly  seventy  years,  I 
find  it  false  in  every  particular.  I  have  met 
rogues  and  rascals,  but  a  host  of  kindly,  gracious 
men  and  women  and  children  and  many  exquis- 
itely beautiful  souls,  every  thought  or  recollection 
of  whom  is  a  delight  and  inspiration.  As  well 
might  one  say  that  the  glorious  sun  is  a  blazing 
meteor  full  fraught  with  destruction  because 
sometimes  its  rays  blast  and  burn — or  that  the 
beautiful  flowers  are  seductive  poisons  because 
of  the  poppy  and  mandragora — or  that  the  sweet 
airs  of  heaven  are  deadly  vapors  because  of  the 
black  hole  of  Calcutta — or  that  the  cold-flowing 
waters  are  fatal  because  in  them  may  lurk  typhoid 
or  cholera.  My  heart  responds  fully  to  Words- 
worth's beautiful  lines, — 

[61] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

"I've  heard  of  hearts  unkind,  kind  deeds 

With  coldness  still  returning. 
Alas:  the  gratitude  of  men 

Hath  oftener  left  me  mourning." 

Burke  said  you  could  not  draw  an  indictment 
against  a  whole  people.  This  doctrine  of  total 
depravity  is  a  slander  upon  a  whole  magnificent 
race  of  beings. 

I  am  aware  that  this  new  view  of  man's  char- 
acter and  destiny  is  a  great  departure  from  the 
opinion  that  has  long  prevailed.  I  know  that  the 
old  views  have  been  deeply  fixt  in  the  hearts  of 
men.  It  will  take  a  strong  wrench  to  tear  them 
away.  One  of  our  bitterest  words  is  miscreant. 
Throw  that  at  any  man  and  see  how  quickly  he 
will  resent  it.  Yet  ''miscreant"  simply  means 
one  who  believes  differently  from  his  neighbors. 
So  firmly  was  the  system  bound  upon  men  that 
not  to  believe  it  was  to  be  a  most  dreadful  man, 
a  miscreant.  There  is  always  the  strong  conser- 
vatism of  human  nature  that  makes  any  depar- 
ture from  use  and  want  difficult.  A  witty  French- 

[62] 


MAN 


man  says  that  when  the  Lord  informed  heaven 
that  he  was  about  to  create  the  worlds,  an  angel 
cried,  "But,  Lord,  Lord,  what  is  to  become  of 
Chaos?"  We  want  to  remember  Bacon's  wise 
word,  "Froward  retention  of  custom  is  as  turbu- 
lent a  thing  as  an  innovation."  When  coal  was 
first  introduced  in  London  a  law  was  passed  ma- 
king it  a  capital  offense  to  burn  it,  and  it  is  said 
that  one  man  was  executed  for  transgressing. 
The  first  cargo  of  ice  that  came  to  New  Orleans 
was  sent  away  by  a  mob,  and  the  ice-house  de- 
molished. Lord  John  Russell  said,  "It  takes 
England  forty-five  years  to  accomplish  any  nec- 
essary reform."  It  has  taken  more  than  ten 
times  forty-five  years  to  reform  our  theology. 

The  chief  and  sufficient  reason  for  adopting 
the  new  opinion  is  the  unutterably  monstrous 
character  of  the  old  one.  It  is  its  own  sufficient 
antidote.  The  heathen  damned,  the  ignorant 
and  neglected  lost,  the  vast  mass  of  men  thus  far 
undone,  a  mere  fragment  saved,  the  best  hope  of 

[63] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

men  to  die  in  infancy — surely  this  can  not  be  the 
good  tidings  of  great  joy  to  all  people. 

Dr.  Parker,  of  London,  in  his  funeral  discourse 
at  the  death  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  said,  "The 
one  man  that  the  church  must  get  rid  of  at  all 
costs  is  the  systematic  theologian  who  attaches 
less  value  to  his  theology  than  to  his  system. 
That  man  must  go!  He  destroys  more  souls  than 
have  been  ruined  by  all  the  infidels  that  have  ever 
lived.  Where  system  is  regarded  as  complete 
and  final,  it  is  fraught  with  inexpressible  mis- 
chief, and  is  to  be  denounced  by  every  man  who 
is  in  sympathy  with  the  cross  of  Christ." 

A  resident  of  China  writes  about  the  miserable 
foot-binding  of  the  people:  "We  have  listened 
with  our  own  ears  to  the  cries  of  a  little  girl  un- 
dergoing the  torturing  process.  Such  agonizing 
wails  never  before  fell  on  our  ears.  They  were 
the  shrieks  of  a  child  absolutely  wild  with  suffer- 
ing. When  the  ligatures  were  loosened  and  the 
shocking  succession  of  breathless  screams  ended 


MAN 


in  long-drawn  wails  of  exhaustion  and  misery, 
the  listener  turned  almost  sick  with  horror  and 
sympathy — yet  a  mother  was  the  deliberate  tor- 
turer of  her  own  baby,  and  a  father  listened  to 
its  cries."  This  is  very  bad,  but  far  worse  is  the 
old  theology  that  worthy  fathers  and  mothers 
taught  to  frightened  children.  It  was  accepted 
by  the  children  without  realizing  thought — a 
matter  of  memorizing  from  a  catechism,  not 
receiving  in  the  heart.  When  the  heart  woke 
indeed  to  realization,  it  rejected  with  horror  or 
went  wild  with  frantic  fear.  In  millions  of  cases 
it  has  done  one  thing  or  the  other. 

Let  me  make  an  earnest  protest  against  the 
continued  use  of  the  Shorter  Catechism  in  my 
own  church.  It  contains  the  false  doctrine  as  to 
man  and  the  present  state  of  things,  in  its  worst 
form.  The  best  thing  that  can  be  said  for  this 
Catechism  is  that  the  first  study  of  it  and  the  con- 
tinued repetition  of  it  are  so  entirely  grievous  and 
mortally  wearisome  that  it  gives  a  strong  distaste 

[65] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

for  the  whole  thing  in  the  minds  of  young  people. 
It  is  as  painful  to  the  mind  as  foot-binding  is  to 
the  body.  God  pity  and  bring  to  a  better  mind 
the  parents  who  afflict  their  children  with  either 
of  them!  In  Dr.  Chalmers'  "Life,"  Vol.  4,  p. 
449,  we  find  a  talk  of  his  with  his  daughter  about 
the  Catechism.  "There's  some  of  your  stour, 
orthodox  folk  just  ever  ready  to  stretch  the  Bible 
to  square  with  the  Catechism;  all  very  well, 
needful  as  a  landmark,  but "  (kindling  up)  "what 
I  say  is,  do  not  let  the  wretched,  mutilated  thing 
be  thrown  between  me  and  the  Bible."  Said  his 
daughter,  "  Bacon  compares  the  Bible  to  the  well- 
spring  and  says  he  were  a  huge  fool  that  would 
drink  but  from  the  tank."  Dr.  Chalmers  laughed, 
"Ha,  ha !  where  does  Bacon  say  that  ?  It's  nasty 
in  the  tank  too,  sometimes."  I  have  heard  very 
many  warm  encomiums  upon  the  Catechism,  but 
I  suggest  in  all  fairness  that  our  Board  of  Pub- 
lication, which  still  distributes  thousands  of  these 
Catechisms,  should  print  on  the  title-page  two 

[66J 


MAN 


mottoes :  "  For  the  huge  fools,"  Bacon,  and  "  It's 
nasty  in  the  tank  sometimes,"  Chalmers.  I 
should  think  I  had  not  lived  in  vain  if  I  could 
deliver  our  young  people  from  the  sad  infliction 
of  the  Shorter  Catechism.  I  know  one  dear 
friend,  now  with  God,  who  in  a  large  family 
went  to  sleep  commonly  after  answering  his  ques- 
tion, happy  youth,  and  was  awakened  to  answer 
when  the  next  one  came.  And  another,  in  a  fam- 
ily of  three  children,  learned  every  third  question 
and  then  had  only  to  place  himself  rightly  for  the 
recital.  When  Mr.  Beecher  delivered  his  famous 
lectures  on  preaching  at  Yale  University,  he 
launched  out  into  a  philippic  against  our  dark  and 
gloomy  churches.  In  the  time  of  free  question- 
ing at  the  close  of  the  address,  Dr.  Leonard 
Bacon,  president  of  the  Seminary,  asked  in  a 
quizzical  way,  "Mr.  Beecher,  don't  you  think  it 
might  be  a  good  idea  to  hang  one  or  two  archi- 
tects?" Mr.  Beecher  reflected  for  a  moment, 
and  answered,  "No,  I  should  not  do  that — but 

[67] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

I'd  make  them  learn  the  Shorter  Catechism." 
Perhaps  that  might  be  tried  as  a  penalty  for  this 
bad  business  of  speeding  automobiles.  It  would 
surely  be  effective. 

The  old  view  of  the  character  and  destiny  of 
man  has  been  the  cause  of  the  bitter  hostility  to 
religion  in  a  vast  company  of  those  who  have 
been  called  hostile.  It  was  this  system,  and  not 
the  religion  of  Jesus,  that  provoked  the  sharp 
arrows  of  many  called  "infidels."  This  system 
was  the  constant  theme  of  Col.  Robert  Ingersoll. 
Without  it  his  occupation  would  have  been  gone. 
Ingersoll,  in  grateful  remembrance,  should  have 
endowed  Princeton  Seminary  in  his  will,  for  it 
furnished  him  all  his  controversial  material. 

May  we  not  hope  that  many  will  welcome  the 
new  and  beautiful  light  upon  the  subject  of  their 
own  very  nature?  It  is  one  glory  of  our  time 
that  there  is  a  greater  readiness  to  receive  new 
truth  than  ever  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Blest 
be  God!  new  truth  will  always  be  coming.  Pro- 

[68] 


MAN 


fessor  Brute  says  well,  "New  wine  is  always  in 
course  of  being  produced  by  the  eternal  vine  of 
truth,  demanding  in  some  particulars  of  belief 
and  practise  new  bottles  for  its  preservation,  and 
it  receives  for  answer  the  order  to  be  content  with 
the  old  ones."  We  must  never  be  content  with 
the  old  ones,  but  fling  them  away  and  demand 
new  ones  for  our  time  and  ourselves. 

In  Hoffman's  well-known  picture,  "The  Child 
Christ  in  the  Temple,"  the  beautiful  child  stands 
in  the  center  of  the  picture,  and  near  him,  lean- 
ing upon  a  staff,  intently  listening,  is  a  very  old 
Rabbi — the  old  dispensation  earnestly  listening 
to  the  new.  Ah,  it  is  fine  when  even  old  age  re- 
ceives the  new  truth,  and  the  new  truth  accepted 
by  the  old  and  borne  on  the  shoulders  of  age  and 
experience  will  gloriously  conquer  the  world. 


[69] 


future  $unf  lament 

P)ERHAPS  the  most  flagrant  transgression  of 
1  the  old  theology  is  its  teaching  as  to  future 
punishment.  We  may  in  general  characterize 
it  as  the  worst  possible  dogma  upon  the  subject. 
The  barbarians  who  formulated  it  were  much  too 
ignorant  to  realize  the  full  sweep  of  their  own 
doctrine,  and  were  remorselessly  cruel.  Frois- 
sart  tells  this  story  of  a  Baron  in  whose  immense 
chimney  the  great  fire  was  going  out  for  lack  of 
fuel.  He  sent  for  wood  again  and  again,  but  it 
did  not  come.  He  became  quite  furious,  and 
when  the  wood  was  announced  to  be  at  the  castle 
door,  he  hurried  out,  picked  up  the  ass  with  the 
fagots  of  wood  on  its  back,  carried  the  whole 
thing  to  the  fireplace,  and  hurled  ass  and  wood 
and  all  into  the  raging  flame.  Whereat  the  guests 


[70] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

laughed  heartily.  The  Baron  ought  surely  to 
have  been  hanged  for  this,  but  it  passed  as  a 
cheerful  joke.  These  men  could  believe  in  endless 
torment;  we  can  not.  But  even  these  cruel  men 
did  not  receive  the  modern  doctrine,  for  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  Church  always  taught  the  great 
and  very  merciful  doctrine  of  Purgatory,  but 
Protestantism  has  taken  hell  from  the  Roman 
Catholics  and  rejected  Purgatory,  producing  the 
most  diabolical  doctrine  of  future  punishment 
that  could  be  devised.  After  a  few  years  of 
earthly  life  the  great  mass  of  the  world's  popula- 
tion have  been  remorselessly  swept  into  endless 
torments.  And  God  is  Love! 

Sismondi,  the  Italian  historian,  came  to  Eng- 
land with  a  great  admiration  for  its  history  and 
constitutional  liberty  and  with  much  respect  for 
the  Protestantism  that  had  helped  to  make  Eng- 
land what  it  is.  But  he  went  to  church  and 
heard  a  sermon  that  denied  an  intermediate  state 
and  preached  the  endless  torment  of  the  wicked. 

[71] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

He  was  full  of  indignation,  and  left  the  church 
vowing  that  he  would  never  again  enter  a  church 
holding  such  a  creed,  and  would  never  help  to 
spread  what  the  English  call  their  Reformation, 
for  by  its  side  Romanism  is  a  religion  of  mercy 
and  peace. 

It  is  wise  and  well  to  give  some  of  the  utter- 
ances in  which  this  doctrine  has  been  taught. 

Here  are  some  of  the  many  expressions  of 
Jonathan  Edwards  on  the  subject  of  hell:  "He 
will  trample  them  beneath  his  feet  with  inexpres- 
sible fierceness.  He  will  crush  their  blood  out 
and  make  it  fly,  so  that  it  will  sprinkle  his  gar- 
ments and  stain  all  his  raiment ";  "You  can  not 
stand  before  an  infuriated  tiger  even — what  then 
will  you  do  when  God  rushes  against  you  in  all 
his  wrath?"  What  a  beautiful  conception  of 
God  this  is!  He  says,  "In  some  heathen  coun- 
tries the  manner  of  disposing  of  dead  bodies  is 
to  dig  a  pit  and  put  in  it  a  great  quantity  of  fuel, 
to  put  the  dead  bodies  on  the  pile  and  set  it  on 

[7*] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

fire.  This  is  some  image  of  the  burning  of  dead 
souls  in  hell."  He  says  again :  "  The  whole  world 
will  probably  be  converted  into  a  great  lake  or 
liquid  globe  of  fire,  a  vast  ocean  of  fire  in  which 
the  wicked  shall  be  overwhelmed,  in  which  the 
wicked  shall  be  tossed  to  and  fro,  having  no  rest 
day  or  night,  billows  of  fire  continually  rolling  over 
their  heads.  They  shall  forever  be  full  of  quick 
sense;  their  heads,  their  eyes,  their  tongues,  their 
hands,  their  feet,  their  loins,  and  their  vitals  shall 
forever  be  full  of  glowing,  melting  fire,  and  also 
they  shall  be  eternally  full  of  the  most  lively  sense 
to  feel  the  torment."  This  is  bad  enough,  but 
there  is  one  touch  that  caps  the  climax:  "The 
sight  of  hell  torments  will  exalt  the  happiness  of 
the  saints  forever,  it  will  really  make  their  happi- 
ness the  greater,  as  it  will  make  them  sensible  of 
their  own  happiness,  it  will  give  them  a  more 
lively  relish  of  it — oh,  it  will  'make  them  sensible 
how  happy  they  are."  The  hell  is  pretty  bad, 
but  the  heaven  seems  to  me  to  be  worse. 

[73] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

Mr.  Spurgeon  sometimes  tried  to  equal  Ed- 
wards in  this  matter,  but  I  do  not  think  he  has 
quite  as  "lively  a  relish"  of  it.  In  his  sermon 
on  the  parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus  he  says: 
"See  how  his  tongue  hangs  from  between  his 
blistered  lips.  How  it  excoriates  and  burns  the 
roof  of  his  mouth  as  if  it  were  a  firebrand."  Here 
is  another  specimen  of  a  child's  hell,  quoted  from 
a  Roman  Catholic  book  by  Rev.  Mr.  Furness, 
published  in  England  not  long  ago  :  "The  fourth 
dungeon  is  the  boiling  kettle.  Is  it  really  a  kettle 
that  is  boiling?  No.  Then  what  is  it?  Hear 
what  it  is.  The  blood  is  boiling  in  the  scalded 
veins  of  that  boy;  the  brain  is  boiling  and  bub- 
bling in  his  head;  the  marrow  is  boiling  in  his 
bones." 

Here  is  a  graphic  description  of  hell  from  lines 
of  the  year  1300: 

"Some  the  jaws  wide  open  wrast 

And  poured  in  the  lead  all  hot, 
Bade  him  thereof  to  drunken  fast 

[74] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

And  skink  to  all  his  friends  about. 
A  devil  came  there  at  the  last 

That  was  the  Master,  well  I  wot, 
A  glowing  coulter  in  him  thrast 

And  thro'  the  heart  the  iron  smote. 
White-hot  sword  blades  some  did  set 

To  back  and  breast  and  either  side, 
In  his  heart  the  pointers  met 

And  made  great,  gaping  woundes  wide." 

As  respects  such  pictures  of  the  future  life  Mr. 
Lecky  well  exprest  the  natural  feeling  of  the  hu- 
man mind  in  the  indignant  words :  "  That  an  all- 
righteous  and  all-merciful  Creator  in  the  full 
exercise  of  these  attributes  deliberately  calls  into 
existence  beings  whom  he  has  from  eternity  des- 
tined to  endless,  unmitigated  torture  is  a  prop- 
osition at  once  so  extravagantly  absurd  and  so 
ineffably  atrocious  that  its  adoption  might  lead 
men  to  doubt  the  universality  of  moral  percep- 
tions. Such  teaching  is,  in  fact,  demonism  and 
in  its  extreme  form.  It  attributes  to  the  Creator 
acts  of  injustice  and  barbarity  which  it  would  be 
impossible  for  the  imagination  to  surpass — acts 

[75] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

before  which  the  most  monstrous  excesses  of 
human  cruelty  dwindle  into  insignificance — acts 
which  are  in  fact  worse  than  any  theologians  have 
attributed  to  the  devil.  As  is  customary  when 
they  enunciate  a  proposition  which  is  palpably 
self-contradictory,  they  call  it  a  mystery  and  an 
occasion  for  faith." 

Mr.  Beecher  in  his  statement  of  belief  before 
the  Congregational  Association  says:  "The  me- 
dieval representation  of  the  punishment  of  the 
wicked  is  a  spiritual  barbarism  worthy  of  having 
been  invented  in  just  such  a  place,  and  by  such 
demons  as  have  been  invented  for  it.  That  there 
will  be  pain  and  penalty  in  another  world  for 
those  who  have  perverted  their  nature  in  this 
world  I  fully  believe.  But  those  exquisite  and 
infernal  descriptions  of  the  material  and  sensu- 
ous torments  of  the  lost,  rolling  in  flames  of  fire, 
writhing  in  the  folds  of  serpents,  gnawed  by  de- 
mons, pierced  by  fiery  forks,  clawed,  dragged, 
tossed,  roasted  by  an  infinity  of  disgusting  devils 

[76] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

in  an  eternity  of  torments,  increasing  with  every 
age,  the  capacity  to  suffer  increasing  also,  till  the 
whole  infinite  round  of  imaginable  space  is  filled 
with  the  smoke  and  shrieks  of  their  torment — 
such  a  dogma  is  an  insult  to  reason,  to  the  moral 
sense  of  mankind;  and  if  it  shall  be  ascribed  to 
God,  it  is  a  blasphemy  that  would  justify  the 
annihilation  of  its  propagators." 

The  old- theology  men  confess  the  dreadful 
nature  of  their  doctrine,  but  say  that  they  must 
teach  it  because  it  is  taught  in  the  words  of  Christ. 
This  we  absolutely  deny.  The  Greek  word 
"aionios"  is  the  one  that  is  relied  on  to  maintain 
the  endlessness  of  future  punishment,  but  Greek 
scholars  know  that  it  does  not  necessarily  mean 
endless,  that  it  very  often  does  not  mean  endless. 
Here  is  one  of  the  most  damning  facts  about  the 
old  theologians,  that  they  take  a  word  that  does 
not  of  itself  mean  endless,  and  upon  this  awful 
theme  compel  it  to  bear  the  mosi  awful  sense.  I 
accuse  them  of  utmost  cruelty  in  so  doing.  I  lay, 

~~~  [77] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

at  the  door  of  this  false  interpretation  of  theirs, 
blasted  lives,  broken  hearts,  dreadful  suicides, 
and  wide-spreading  infidelity  and  atheism.  Mr. 
McCullock,  Secretary  of  the  United  States  Treas- 
ury, tells  us  that  when  his  cousin,  a  most  lovely 
lady,  was  dying,  her  pastor,  Dr.  Fessenden, 
father  of  Senator  Fessenden,  came  to  her  bedside 
and  said:  "Sister,  this  is  probably  the  last  time 
we  shall  meet.  I  want  to  ask  you  one  more 
question:  are  you  willing  to  be  damned  for  the 
glory  of  God  ?  "  She  hesitated,  when  he  repeated 
the  question  with  much  severity.  At  last  she  an- 
swered, "Yes,  I  think  I  am."  Again  I  cry  out 
against  the  remorseless  cruelty  of  the  old  theology. 
Think  of  a  woman,  a  gentle,  timid  woman — a 
dying  woman — belabored  with  such  a  question  as 
that!  They  used  to  say  of  the  old  theology,— 

"  A  text  or  dogma 
Once  you  trip  on  it,  entails 
Twenty-nine  distinct  damnations, 
One  sure  if  another  fails." 

[78] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

There  is  one  text  which,  perhaps  more  than 
any  other,  has  led  to  the  acceptance  of  endless 
torment.  It  is  Matt.  xxv.  46:  "And  these  shall 
go  away  into  endless  punishment,  and  the  right- 
eous into  life  eternal."  But  a  right  understand- 
ing of  the  words  sweeps  away  the  dreadful  doc- 
trine. In  the  Greek  we  read,  "these  shall  go 
away  into  the  eternal  kolasis"  I  open  my  Lid- 
dell  and  Scott's  Greek  Dictionary,  a  standard 
book,  and  repeat  to  the  reader  what  I  find  as  the 
meanings  of  "  kolasis  " — "  pruning  of  trees ;  hence 
checking,  punishing,  chastisement,  correction." 
The  word  is  from  the  verb  "kolapto,"  to  hew  or 
cut,  so  comes  pruning  as  the  first  meaning.  But 
does  any  gardener  prune  a  vine  to  destroy  it  ?  It 
is  a  hard  process  to  the  vine,  but  it  helps  the  vine. 
And  the  Lord  Jesus  in  this  verse  teaches  us  dis- 
tinctly that  the  punishment  is  for  correction. 
What  a  cruel  heart  it  is  that  would  twist  that  to 
eternal  torment!  I  charge  it  home  upon  the  old 
theology  that  it  is  remorseless  cruelty  so  to  teach. 

[79] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

The  doctrine  of  endless  torment  is  a  combina- 
tion of  ignorance  and  cruelty,  two  of  the  most 
desperate  crimes  of  humanity.  Shall  we  not  all 
join  in  Luther's  exclamation  in  his  letter  to  Han- 
sen  von  Rechenberg:  "God  forbid  that  I  should 
limit  the  time  of  acquiring  faith  to  the  present 
life !  In  the  depths  of  divine  mercy  there  may  be 
an  opportunity  to  win  it  in  the  future  state." 

A  word  may  be  added  as  to  Edwards'  sugges- 
tion that  the  sight  of  hell  will  increase  the  happi- 
ness of  the  saints — will  give  them  a  "  more  lively 
relish  "  of  it.  In  this  he  follows  the  word  of  an 
old  father,  Tertullian,  who  vents  the  same  rngst 
abominable  notion.  Bishop  Bickersteth,  in  his 
"  Yesterday,  To-day,  and  Forever"  gets  a  better 
view  in  saying  that  lost  souls  find  their  only 
" lenitive  of  pain"  in  gazing  at  the  bliss  of  the 
saved.  Upon  this  Dean  Plumptre  wisely  com- 
ments: "Might  it  not  even  be  said  that  there  is 
a  higher  spiritual  excellence  in  the  character 
which  rejoices  that  others  are  in  blessedness  which 

[so] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

it  can  not  share,  than  in  that  of  the  blest  who 
contemplate  the  torments  of  the  lost  with  an  un- 
disturbed complacency?"  Most  of  us  will  agree 
with  the  Dean,  tho  it  seems  rather  an  inversion 
of  heaven  and  hell.  I,  for  one,  if  I  were  where 
they  were  having  a  "  more  lively  relish"  from  the 
endless  torment  of  some  one  else,  would  have 
only  one  feeling — "  Please  let  me  out — any  where, 
anywhere  out  of  this  world."  Our  President 
Roosevelt  in  his  Annual  Message  to  Congress  has 
this  to  say  of  the  crime  of  lynching:  "No  man 
can  take  part  in  the  torture  of  a  human  being — " 
(let  me  pause  a  moment  to  say,  no  man  can  have 
a  "lively  relish"  of  it  without  taking  the  very 
worst  part  in  it) — "  No  man  can  take  part  in  the 
torture  of  a  human  being  without  having  his  own 
moral  nature  permanently  lowered."  How  then 
with  these  saints  and  their  lively  relish  of  hell  ? 
How  long  will  they  remain  saints?  And  how 
with  the  great  God  who  for  ages  has  been  con- 
templating this  torture  and  strengthening  the 

[81] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

victims  to  endure?  How  will  it  affect  his  moral 
nature  ? 

John  Locke  says  on  this  subject  of  future  pun- 
ishment: "By  death  some  understand  endless 
torments  in  hell.  But  it  seems  a  strange  way  of 
understanding  a  law  which  requires  the  plainest 
and  directest  words,  that  by  death  should  be 
meant  eternal  life  in  misery.  Can  any  one  be 
supposed  to  intend,  by  a  law  which  says,  'for 
felony  thou  shalt  surely  die,'  not  that  he  should 
lose  his  life,  but  be  kept  alive  in  exquisite  and 
perpetual  torments?" 

Whittier  wrote  to  a  friend:  "I  am  not  a  uni- 
versalist,  for  I  believe  in  the  possibility  of  the 
perpetual  loss  of  the  soul  that  persistently  turns 
away  from  God,  in  the  next  life  as  in  this.  But 
I  do  believe  that  the  divine  love  and  compassion 
follow  us  in  all  worlds,  and  that  the  Heavenly 
Father  will  do  the  best  that  is  possible  for  every 
creature  He  has  made.  What  that  will  be  must 
be  left  to  His  infinite  wisdom  and  goodness." 

[82] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

Thomas  Newton,  Bishop  of  Bristol,  in  his  ser- 
mon on  the  "  Final  State  and  Condition  of  Men," 
says,  "The  eternal  punishment  is  of  the  wicked, 
and  the  wicked  may  repent  and  change."  He 
says  further:  "To  suppose  that  a  man's  happi- 
ness and  misery  to  all  eternity  should  absolutely 
and  unchangeably  be  fixed  and  determined  by 
the  uncertain  behavior  of  a  few  years  in  this  life 
is  a  supposition  even  more  unreasonable  than  that 
a  man's  mind  and  manners  should  be  completely 
formed  and  fashioned  in  his  cradle  and  his  whole 
future  fortune  and  condition  depend  altogether 
upon  his  infancy.  .  .  .  Repentance  is  therefore 
not  impossible,  even  in  hell." 

As  to  the  opinion  of  the  Jews  upon  the  subject 
of  endless  torment,  one  of  the  most  learned  Rab- 
bis, Emmanuel  Deutsch,  whom  George  Eliot 
calls  "the  man  among  living  men  who  knows  the 
most  about  the  Talmud,"  in  his  essay  on  the 
Talmud  writes:  "There  is  no  everlasting  dam- 
nation according  to  the  Talmud.  There  is  only 

[83] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

a  temporary  punishment  even  for  the  worst  of 
sinners."  In  conversation  with  Mr.  Cox,  author 
of  "Salvator  Mundi,"  he  said:  "Of  this  you  may 
be  quite  sure,  that  there  is  not  a  word  in  the  Tal- 
mud which  lends  any  support  to  that  damnable 
doctrine  of  endless  torment."  The  Rabbi  feels 
strongly  on  the  subject,  and  we  can  not  wonder. 
The  new  theology  would  make  room  for  a  full 
discussion  of  two  varieties  of  opinion  on  future 
punishment — an  intermediate  state  and  condi- 
tional immortality.  Either  of  these  is  an  im- 
mense advance  on  the  absolute  universality  of 
endless  torment  for  the  wicked  that  the  old  the- 
ology so  cruelly  insists  upon  and  with  so  very 
little  foundation.  An  intermediate  state  is  based 
upon  the  idea  that  very  many,  when  they  leave 
this  world,  are  germinal  souls — souls  in  bud — 
too  bad  for  heaven  and  too  good  for  hell.  Bishop 
Butler  says,  "Analogy,"  Part  i,chap.  3,  that  virtue 
becoming  very  strong  in  the  future  life  and  being 
"seen  by  any  order  of  vicious  throughout  the  uni- 

[84] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

versal  kingdom  of  God,  would  have  a  tendency 
to  amend  those  of  them  that  are  capable  of  amend- 
ment. If  our  notion  of  the  plan  of  Providence 
were  enlarged  in  any  sort  proportional  to  what 
late  discoveries  have  enlarged  our  views  with  re- 
spect to  the  material  world,  representations  of 
this  kind  would  not  appear  absurd  or  extrava- 
gant." Christianity  in  general  accepts  the  doc- 
trine of  an  intermediate  state.  Many  Protest- 
ants accept  it,  and  the  Protestants  who  do  not 
accept  it  are  but  a  fragment  of  the  whole  Chris- 
tian world.  It  is  a  very  interesting  fact  that  the 
two  great  branches  of  the  Christian  Church,  the 
Roman  Catholic  and  the  Greek,  both  hold  to  an 
intermediate  state  of  purification.  It  is  very 
pleasing  to  know  that  the  men  who  insist  so  posi- 
tively on  endless  torment  for  all  not  saved  in  this 
life,  form  but  a  small  portion  of  the  Christian 
Church — that  those  who  cherish  so  very  unde- 
sirable and  uncharitable  an  opinion  are  not  as 
numerous  as  they  think  or  sound.  General  Grant 

[85] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

tells  us  his  first  experience  with  wolves.  He 
heard  a  great  pack  howling  down  upon  his  soli- 
tary companion  and  himself.  But  his  comrade 
laughed  and  said  it  was  either  one  or  two,  and  so 
it  proved.  Wolves  are  very  noisy  and  very  cruel, 
and  there  are  not  so  many  of  them  as  you  think. 
Many  who  receive  the  new  theology  accept  the 
doctrine  of  conditional  immortality;  that  sin 
tends  distinctly  to  destroy  the  soul,  and  so  the 
wages  of  sin  are  really  death.  Mr.  Beecher  says: 
"The  number  of  those  who  hold  that  immor- 
tality is  not  natural  but  a  gift  of  God  to  those 
who  have  gained  sufficient  moral  development  is 
increasing,  nor  does  the  New  Testament  forbid 
such  a  supposition.  Suppose  some  men  go  out  of 
existence  and  that  is  the  end  of  them.  Suppose 
men  attain  unto  eternal  life  through  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ  in  so  far  as  they  have  unfolded  here  from 
animal  conditions  and  are  susceptible  of  further 
development  in  time  to  come.  Or  suppose  their 
low  moral  condition  at  death  brings  the  experi- 

[86] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

ment  to  an  end.  When  a  man  has  spent  the 
forces  of  life  here  and  has  not  reached  the  condi- 
tion which  makes  another  stage  possible  to  him, 
suppose  he  simply  goes  out.  He  that  would  live 
on  must  live  well  now." 

This  teaching  has  been  an  immense  relief  to 
many  thoughtful  minds,  from  the  most  distressing 
teaching  of  the  old  theology.  Of  conditional 
immortality  Coleridge  says:  "I  am  confident  that 
this  doctrine  would  be  a  far  stronger  motive  than 
the  present,  for  no  man  will  believe  eternal  mis- 
ery of  himself,  but  millions  would  admit  that  if 
they  did  not  amend  their  lives  they  would  be  un- 
deserving of  living  forever."  There  is  a  beauti- 
ful Hindu  saying  which  the  good  Lord  may 
practise  in  his  treatment  of  undeveloped  or  err- 
ing souls:  " Conquer  a  man  who  never  gives,  by 
gifts.  Subdue  untruthful  men  by  truthfulness. 
Vanquish  an  angry  man  by  gentleness;  and  over- 
come the  evil  man  by  goodness."  There  are 
many  thoughts  that  lie  in  the  direction  of  an  ut- 

[87] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

terance  of  Swedenborg,  that  Bishop  Huntington 
commends  as  worthy  of  serious  consideration, 
that  in  some  respects  hell  may  be  more  of  a  hell 
to  those  who  are  not  in  it  than  to  those  who  are. 
The  slums  are  not  as  grievous  in  some  respects  to 
those  who  live  in  them  as  to  those  who  go  ''slum- 
ming" through  them.  It  looks,  too,  as  tho  the 
only  real  satisfaction  of  God  would  be,  not  in 
tormenting  sinners,  but  that  sinful  men  should 
fully  acknowledge  that  God  is  right,  that  good- 
ness is  right,  that  obedience  is  right,  and  that  they 
were  wrong.  And,  after  all,  faith  in  the  future 
life  is  not  so  much  that  it  will  be  thus  and  so,  but 
that  it  will  be  as  God  arranges,  and  he  who  has 
done  such  wonders  for  us  here  will  not  fail  us 
there,  so  that  both  life  and  death  are  a  most  pro- 
found faith  in  God.  When  Lincoln's  father  was 
dying,  his  son,  then  a  young  man,  wrote  to  him: 
"  Remember  to  call  upon  and  confide  in  our  great 
and  good  and  merciful  Maker,  who  will  not  turn 
away  from  you  in  any  extremity.  He  notes  the 

[88] 


FUTURE  PUNISHMENT 

fall  of  the  sparrow  and  numbers  the  hairs  of  our 
heads,  and  He  will  not  forget  the  dying  man  who 
puts  his  trust  in  Him."  Here  Lincoln  writes  the 
profound  yet  simple  theology  of  the  universal 
human  heart. 

The  study  of  the  whole  subject  of  future  pun- 
ishment may  teach  us  that  we  damn  others  a 
great  deal  more  easily  than  God  does.  That  is  a 
work  about  which  He  is  extremely  slow. 

And  another  thought  may  be  added,  that  the 
spiritual  life  is  itself  the  highest  proof  of  immor- 
tality; live  it  and  you  will  know  it:  so  the  sinful 
life  is  the  most  profound  proof  of  hell;  live  it  and 
you  will  know  it.  It  was  a  wise  man  who  said, 
"I  believe  in  hell  because  I  have  been  there  so 
often." 

I  shall  be  assailed  upon  this  head  by  the  usual 
remark  that  I  am  "letting  down  the  bars."  I 
earnestly  wish  that  I  could  persuade  the  man 
who  is  so  zealous  in  putting  up  the  bars  that  he  is 
probably  doing  it  from  the  outside.  If  there  is 

[89] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

one  sin  more  deadly  than  another,  it  is  self -right- 
eousness; and  the  horror  of  it  should  make  our 
friend  drop  the  bar  that  he  is  laboriously  putting 
very  high  up.  With  his  harsh  severity  he  is 
probably  fencing  himself  out. 


[90] 


VI 


WE  give  the  name  of  church  commonly  to 
a  special  building  with  Gothic  windows 
and  lofty  spire,  with  long-drawn  aisle  and  fretted 
vault,  the  Gregorian  chant  echoing  through  its 
lofty  arches,  the  mitred  priest  or  tiaraed  Pope  min- 
istering at  the  altar,  and  the  people  bowed  before 
the  sacred  symbols.  But  it  is  quite  possible  that 
there  may  be  all  these  things  and  there  may  not 
be  any  church  at  all.  Channing  says:  "One  of 
the  coldest  spots  on  earth  is  a  church  without  de- 
votion. What  is  it  to  me  that  a  costly  temple  is 
set  apart  by  ever  so  many  rites  for  God's  service, 
that  priests  who  trace  their  lineage  to  apostles 
have  consecrated  it,  if  I  find  it  thronged  by  the 
worldly  and  undevout  ?  This  is  no  church  to  me." 
An  American  was  being  led  by  a  verger  through 

[91] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

Westminster  Abbey — a  man  was  kneeling  by  the 
shrine  of  Edward  IV.  The  verger  told  the  man 
he  must  not  do  that.  The  American  asked  if  the 
man  was  not  praying.  The  verger  answered, 
"No  doubt,  but  if  we  allowed  that  sort  of  thing 
we  should  have  them  praying  all  around."  To 
a  vast  company  from  bishops  to  vergers,  the 
church  is  for  the  fees,  not  for  the  devotion.  Rev. 
Sydney  Smith  said  some  bishops  were  so  like 
Judas  Iscariot  he  was  inclined  to  receive  the  doc- 
trine of  the  apostolic  succession. 

There  is  an  ancient  legend  that  runs  in  this 
wise :  Jesus  came  down  in  the  midst  of  an  Auto 
da  fe",  where  many  were  being  burned  to  death 
for  their  faith.  He  showed  his  sympathy  with 
them  and  was  cast  into  prison.  At  midnight  the 
chief  inquisitor  visited  him  in  his  cell  and  said 
to  him:  "You  are  wrong  in  coming  back  to  the 
earth  to  interfere  with  the  work  of  your  church. 
You  made  a  mistake  not  to  accept  the  offer  of 
the  Tempter  on  the  mount,  and  to  undertake  to 

[92] 


THE  CHURCH 


convert  the  world  by  silent  and  spiritual  forces. 
It  has  been  necessary  for  the  church  to  correct 
your  work  and  supplement  it  with  the  sword  of 
Caesar.  You  also  to-morrow  shall  be  burned." 
Jesus  answered  not  a  word,  but  looked  into  the 
eyes  of  the  inquisitor  with  his  mild  gaze,  stooped 
and  kissed  the  old  man's  bloodless  lips.  The 
inquisitor  opened  the  door  and  bade  the  Master 
depart  and  never  return  again. 

A  friend  of  mine,  an  elder  in  a  Presbyterian 
church,  was  fighting  the  battle  of  the  church  one 
Sunday  morning.  His  opponent  challenged  him 
to  go  to  a  near-by  fashionable  church  and  see 
what  their  reception  would  be.  They  were  a 
very  plain  couple.  They  entered.  No  one  no- 
ticed them  or  offered  them  a  seat.  The  elder  in- 
sisted on  giving  the  church  people  full  time,  but 
the  service  began  and  still  they  stood  uninvited. 
Then  his  secular  friend  leaned  toward  the  church- 
man and  said,  "Let  us  get  out  of  the  damned 
place." 

[93] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

Such  a  church  as  this  makes  up  for  its  utter 
disregard  of  every  precept  of  the  Lord  Jesus  by 
a  very  special  emphasis  on  dead  doctrine  and 
equally  dead  ceremonies.  It  lengthens  the  creed 
and  shortens  the  commandments.  And  how 
dead  and  dark  it  can  become  no  mortal  man 
knows.  Chrysostom  once  declared,  "If  I  have 
ever  administered  the  eucharist  when  not  fasting, 
let  my  name  be  wiped  out  of  the  catalog  of  the 
bishops,  let  Christ  cast  me  out  of  his  kingdom." 
It  is  said  that  in  Italy  some  bandits  attacked  a 
traveler,  killed  him  and  stole  his  goods,  but  they 
would  not  touch  the  meat  that  was  in  his  wagon 
because  it  was  the  time  of  Lent.  "Ye  pay  tithe 
of  mint  and  anise  and  cumin,  and  have  omit- 
ted the  weightier  matters  of  the  law — judgment, 
mercy,  and  faith." 

And  a  church  of  this  sort  has  uniformly  de- 
graded and  debased  the  people  committed  to  its 
care.  They  are  a  disgrace  to  it.  The  church 
has  taught  them  a  mean  theology,  and  as  a  result 

[94  1 


THE   CHURCH 


the  meanest  people  in  the  whole  world  are  some- 
times found  on  the  church-rolls.  They  are  strict 
in  doctrine  and  very  careful  in  ritual,  but  they  are 
mean  in  their  shops,  mean  in  the  street,  mean  in 
their  homes,  their  kitchens  and  parlors,  and  mean- 
est of  all  in  their  very  hearts.  The  church  has 
taught  them  to  seek  their  own  salvation  by  re- 
ceiving certain  dogmas  and  doing  certain  cere- 
monies instead  of  by  being  noble  men  and  women 
and  giving  their  lives  for  others.  Ordinary  men, 
like  Abou  ben  Adhem  or  Longfellow's  Village 
Blacksmith,  loathe  them,  and  the  country  town 
despises  them  as  they  pass,  for  they  never  lift  a 
ringer  to  help  man,  woman,  or  child. 

In  the  year  1893  Dr.  Ernest  Hart  analyzed  the 
water  of  the  sacred  well  at  Mecca,  where  the  pil- 
grims crowded,  and  found  it  swarming  with 
cholera  bacilli.  His  warning  was  unheeded,  and 
on  June  24,  when  100,000  people  were  gathered, 
the  plague  struck  them  like  a  cloud-burst  and  the 
ground  was  covered  with  the  dead.  A  Turkish 

[95] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

regiment  was  ordered  to  bury  them.  It  began 
the  work  700  strong,  and  when  it  was  done  only 
200  of  them  were  left.  This  comes,  and  it  will 
always  come,  from  having  the  sacred  wells  poi- 
soned. There  is  not  a  sham  church  in  the  whole 
world  teaching  sham  doctrine  and  ritual  but  the 
dead  are  lying  thickly  about  it,  while  the  church 
is  stoutly  insisting  it  is  the  only  true  church  and 
gateway  to  heaven. 

There  is  and  always  will  be  a  Church  of  God, 
and  it  will  be  quite  the  opposite  of  this  other, 
as  a  man  differs  from  a  corpse.  It  is  a  very 
far-spreading  institution.  Dr.  Washburn,  Presi- 
dent of  Robert  College  at  Constantinople,  was 
invited  to  the  Parliament  of  Religions  at  Chicago. 
He  wrote  in  reply  to  the  invitation:  "I  sympathize 
with  the  spirit  of  your  circular.  There  is  a  unity 
in  religion  broader  and  deeper  than  the  world 
has  ever  generally  recognized.  I  am  more  and 
more  imprest  every  year,  as  I  am  brought  into 
close  contact  with  so  many  different  faiths,  that 

[96] 


THE  CHURCH 


there  is  a  God  to  whom  we  are  responsible  for 
our  actions;  that  to  do  justly,  love  mercy,  and 
walk  humbly  with  God  is  essentially  the  founda- 
tion of  all  religion.  The  Holy  Spirit  leads  men 
of  the  most  diverse  faiths  to  the  knowledge  of 
one  common  Father." 

The  man  who  loves  God  and  is  full  of  his  spirit, 
who  walks  in  love  and  in  righteousness  and  en- 
joys the  peace  of  God  and  the  joy  of  overcom- 
ing sin,  who  spends  his  days  doing  his  appointed 
work  faithfully  and  in  all  ways  serving  his  fellow 
men,  belongs  to  this  true  church.  The  church 
made  up  of  such  people  and  calling  for  such  peo- 
ple is  One  and  always  must  be,  and  orders,  sac- 
raments, and  ritual  are  the  merest  trifles  compared 
with  the  faith  and  work  of  such  a  church. 

One  of  the  great  sins  of  the  sham  church  is 
that  it  keeps  out  so  many  who  are  in  the  true 
church,  well  meaning,  right  feeling  and  right  do- 
ing men  and  women  who  have  not  had  a  certain 
kind  of  experience,  or  can  not  accept  a  very 

[97] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

absurd  dogma,  or  do  not  enjoy  a  very  joyless  style 
of  religious  service.  And  being  kept  out,  they 
have  all  the  discomforts  of  the  banished,  and  are 
discouraged  or  alienated,  and,  instead  of  helping 
religion,  have  been  inclined  to  a  seeming  opposi- 
tion and  to  lead  others  that  way.  The  results 
have  been  very  large  and  very  disastrous.  It 
will  do  a  world  of  good  to  tear  off  the  mask  from 
this  false  church  and  lift  up  the  church  of  God- 
fearers  and  man-lovers  and  so  true  followers  of 
Jesus.  Lincoln  was  asked  why  he  had  never 
joined  the  church,  and  answered  that  when  he 
found  a  church  that  had  these  two  foundation 
principles — of  love  to  God  and  love  to  man — he 
would  join  it  at  once.  Well,  this  is  the  true 
church,  and  it  is  coming,  and  men  like  Lincoln 
will  be  leaders  within  it  and  no  longer  outside  it. 
Moreover,  the  man  who  asked  Lincoln  why  he 
was  not  a  member  of  the  church  overlooked  the 
fact  that  the  church  was  in  that  day  abolish- 
ing slavery,  and  in  that  church  Lincoln  was 

[98] 


THE  CHURCH 


not  only   a  member,  but  a  High  Priest  of  the 
whole  host. 

There  are  many  pathetic  stories  told  about 
Lincoln;  and  one  of  the  best  concerns  a  certain 
young  Vermont  soldier,  William  Scott.  He  was 
condemned  to  death  for  sleeping  at  his  post  while 
on  guard.  Lincoln  visited  the  camp,  and,  hear- 
ing of  it,  sent  for  him  and  heard  his  story.  He 
said:  "You  shall  not  be  shot.  Now  how  am  I 
to  be  paid  for  saving  your  life?"  The  soldier 
told  him  he  thought  he  and  his  comrades  could 
raise  perhaps  $500.  Lincoln  said:  " There  is 
only  one  man  in  the  world  who  can  pay  me,  and 
his  name  is  William  Scott.  If  from  this  day  Will- 
iam Scott  does  his  duty  so  that  when  he  comes  to 
die  he  can  look  me  in  the  face  and  say,  I  have 
kept  my  promise,  then  I  will  be  paid."  Scott 
became  the  best  soldier  in  his  regiment,  and  was 
shot  to  death  on  the  Peninsula.  He  said,  "Let 
some  one  tell  the  President  I  have  tried  to  be  a 
good  soldier  and  true  to  the  flag."  It  seems  to 

[99] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

me  Lincoln  admitted  him  into  the  church  that 
day,  the  church  of  the  faithful  and  true  to  which 
Lincoln  so  nobly  belonged. 

Max  Miiller  pleads  for  the  "bookless  religion, 
which  is  in  the  head  and  the  heart,  in  the  sky 
and  the  rocks,  the  rivers  and  the  mountains,  the 
simple,  natural,  bookless,  eternal  religion  which 
our  age  wants  more  than  anything  else." 

One  thing  the  true  church  will  do — it  will  tear 
down  the  miserable  fence  that  the  sham  church 
has  erected  between  the  religious  and  the  secular. 
Mr.  Justice  Stephens  says,  "Every  act  is  spir- 
itual, every  power  is  spiritual,  whether  a  man  is 
saying  his  prayers  or  buying  an  estate."  An- 
other says,  "They  are  the  fruits  of  the  spirit, 
whether  the  love  is  the  love  of  a  woman  nursing 
a  fretful  child,  or  the  long-suffering  of  a  man 
harassed  with  the  vexing  details  of  business,  or 
the  gentleness  is  that  of  the  doctor  following  the 
dark  mazes  of  a  fever,  or  the  patience  that  of  a 
mechanic  fitting  the  joints  and  valves  of  an  en- 

[100] 


THE  CHURCH 


gine."  Taught  by  the  false  church  the  wicked 
King  John  ordered  that  his  body  was  to  be  wrapt 
in  a  monk's  cowl  and  that  he  was  to  be  buried 
between  Saints  Oswald  and  Wulfstan.  What 
more  could  be  done  for  him  than  that  ?  But  the 
common  people  did  not  seem  to  think  he  was 
comfortable,  for  they  said,  "Hell  is  a  very  bad 
place,  but  it  is  much  worse  since  King  John  went 
there." 

There  is  a  beautiful  little  book,  whose  title  is 
worth  a  good  deal  more  than  most  books,  "The 
Practise  of  the  Presence  of  God."  It  is  the  rec- 
ord of  a  monk  in  the  Middle  Ages  called  Brother 
Lawrence.  He  was  cook  for  the  monastery,  and 
he  found  God  just  as  near  and  enjoyed  him  just 
as  much  when  he  was  cooking  the  dinner  for  the 
monks  as  when  he  was  taking  the  sacrament. 
He  understood  the  true  nature  of  religion,  and  if 
any  cook  does  not  find  God  in  preparing  the  din- 
ner and  in  doing  it  well,  then  he  does  not  find 
God  in  any  sacrament. 

[101] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

James  Freeman  Clarke  writes  of  that  marvel- 
ous man,  John  Wesley:  "No  man  ever  went  so 
entirely  out  of  the  realm  of  form  and  ceremony 
into  that  of  life  as  Wesley.  His  profoundest  con- 
viction was  this,  that  no  human  being  lived  on 
earth  so  bad  or  so  base,  so  stupid  or  worldly,  but 
that,  if  he  could  believe  it,  God  was  ready  to 
kindle  in  his  soul  a  fire  of  love  which  would 
wholly  consume  the  evil.  His  business  was  to 
make  men  believe  it,  and  for  this  faith  he  lived." 
It  is  no  wonder  that  he  brought  so  many  outsi- 
ders within  the  fold. 

There  is  unquestionably  one  great,  true  church 
in  all  the  world.  It  is  made  up  of  all  the  good  in 
every  land — simply  that.  One  thing  it  can  not 
endure,  even  pretension.  The  narrow  church 
that  insists  that  it  is  the  only  true  church  is  much 
less  the  church  for  its  arrogance.  The  Pharisee 
who  enlarges  his  phylacteries  and  widens  the 
borders  of  his  garments  is  the  most  likely  man 
to  be  outside.  Poor  sailor  Jack,  who  chews  and 

[102] 


THE  CHURCH 


smokes  and  fights  and  sometimes,  alas!  swears, 
but  who  volunteers  to  go  in  that  very  little  boat 
into  the  hell  of  furious  raging  waters  to  save  the 
shipwrecked  people,  he  is  quite  likely  to  be  in 
the  true  church.  The  fireman  who  murders  the 
King's  English,  and  makes  no  figure  in  society, 
but  climbs  the  ladder  and  leaps  into  the  smoke 
that  clutches  him  by  the  throat,  staggers  to  the 
bed  and  lifts  up  the  little  babe  crying  there,  fol- 
lows our  dear  Lord  indeed. 

I  have  always  enjoyed  this  story  of  the  famous 
showman,  P.  T.  Barnum.  He  was  leading  a 
minister  over  his  "Greatest  Show  on  Earth,"  and 
when  he  was  through  the  circuit  the  minister 
thanked  him  effusively  as  he  shook  hands  and 
wished  that  he  might  meet  him  in  heaven.  Quick 
as  a  flash  the  showman  answered,  "You  will  if 
you  get  there." 

Some  one  has  painted  a  very  suggestive  picture 
that  sets  forth  the  householder  in  the  parable 
giving  to  every  man  a  penny.  A  bishop  and  a 

[103] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

cardinal  and  a  great  Pope  look  at  the  penny  with 
much  disgust,  but  an  American  Indian  quite  ad- 
mires it,  and  a  one-legged  sailor  stumps  along, 
his  face  wreathed  in  smiles  as  he  holds  the  penny 
in  his  hand  and  fairly  gloats  over  it.  What  im- 
mense meaning  is  in  Jesus'  words:  "Ye  shall  see 
Abraham  and  Isaac  and  Jacob  in  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  ye  yourselves  thrust  out,  and  they 
shall  come  from  the  east  and  the  west  and  the 
north  and  the  south  and  shall  sit  down  in  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  And  behold  there  are  last 
that  shall  be  first  and  there  are  first  that  shall  be 
last." 

In  short  the  sham  church  is  full  of  arrogance 
and  bitterness  and  pride  and  cruelty;  it  is  the 
meanest  humbug  there  is  in  all  the  great  round 
world:  the  true  church  is  full  of  meekness  and 
gentleness  and  patience  and  charity  and  helpful- 
ness: it  is  the  grandest  reality  in  all  the  world, 
and  all  true  men  will  press  into  it.  Such  a  church 
appeals  irresistibly  to  all  manly  men  and  noble 


THE   CHURCH 


women,  and  they  are  in  it;  but  the  sham  church 
appeals  only  to  the  weaker  sort  of  women  and 
still  more  weakly  men.  Every  gathering  of  the 
true  church  is  like  a  trumpet-call  to  every  noble 
endeavor.  There  has  just  been  held  in  New 
York  a  great  Peace  Congress  with  representa- 
tives from  the  whole  world.  This  was  a  great 
Church  Council,  wiser  and  better  than  that  of 
Nice.  It  did  not  dissect  the  Godhead,  but  it 
planned  to  save  men  from  the  rot  and  curse  and 
fury  and  hell  of  war.  And  the  high  Court  of 
The  Hague  is  not  only  one  of  the  greatest  tri- 
umphs of  our  civilization,  but  one  of  the  noblest 
parts  of  the  true  church.  And  the  life-saving 
stations  all  along  our  shores  are  true  branches  of 
this  noble  vine  and  church.  And  our  splendid 
hospitals  all  over  Christendom,  more  of  them 
and  better  equipped  than  our  fathers  ever  dreamed 
of,  are  most  beautiful  sections  of  this  great  church. 
The  devil  fairly  gnashes  his  teeth  at  this  noble 
church,  but  he  loves  the  cold,  dead,  narrow, 

[105] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

pragmatical,  sectarian,  high  and  mighty  and  ut- 
terly contemptible  sham  church  and  looks  upon 
it  as  his  very  chief  work.  Let  us  make  sure  of 
two  things — that  we  are  out  of  the  sham  church 
and  in  the  true  church,  by  laying  our  hands  to 
the  world's  great  need  and  the  Lord's  eternal  and 
soul-satisfying  work. 

And  the  most  beautiful  thing  about  the  true 
church  is  that  no  one  is  excluded  who  tries  to  do 
his  best.  The  Pope  is  not  shut  out,  the  cardinal 
and  bishops  are  by  no  means  refused;  pillars  of 
churches  of  all  sorts  will  be  let  in  with  the  rest 
if,  like  the  Christ,  they  go  about  doing  good. 
But  they  must  all  come  in  with  the  rest.  They 
have  no  exclusive  claims  or  primogeniture  rights. 
High  functionaries  of  all  sorts  must  not  be  dis- 
couraged— there  is  room  for  them  too,  if  they 
will  be  meek  and  come  in  in  a  very  lowly  way. 
The  One  who  was  born  in  a  stable,  and  had  once 
to  borrow  a  penny,  and  owned  just  the  coat  that 
covered  Him  and  that  the  soldiers  gambled  for 

[106] 


THE   CHURCH 


and  who  died  on  the  shameful  cross  and  was  laid 
in  a  borrowed  grave,  will  accept  as  brethren  and 
sisters  all  who  come  meekly  and  truly  and  bear 
his  cross  of  patient  love  and  service.  Judson, 
the  great  Burma  missionary,  showed  that  he 
understood  these  things  when  some  one  was 
praising  him  for  his  great  endurance  and  he  an- 
swered, "Many  a  poor  washerwoman  has  done 
as  much."  A  Presbyterian  minister  once  told 
me  that,  his  wife  being  sick  the  day  before,  he  had 
done  the  washing  for  the  family.  He  was  not 
much  of  a  preacher  and  I  fancy  the  good  Lord 
admired  his  Monday's  work  more  than  his  Sun- 
day's. His  wife  probably  did  also.  "He  that 
doeth  the  will  of  my  Father  in  heaven,  the  same 
is  my  brother  and  sister  and  mother." 

"The  parish  priest  of  austerity 
Climbed  up  in  a  high  church-steeple 
To  be  nearer  God  so  that  he  might  hand 
His  word  down  to  the  people. 
And  in  sermon  script  he  daily  wrote 
What  he  thought  was  sent  by  heaven, 
And  he  dropt  it  down  on  the  people's  heads 

[107] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 


Two  times  one  day  in  seven. 

In  his  age  God  said,  '  Come  down  and  die.' 

And  he  cried  from  out  the  steeple, 

'Where  art  thou,  Lord?'     And  the  Lord  replied, 

'Down  here,  among  the  people.'  " 


[108] 


VII 

Eej'oice  and  T&t  dfrceeDftrg 

GOD  is  the  greatest,  nearest,  kindest  of  all 
beings;    religion  is  the  brightest,  gladdest 
of  all  things.     It  is  impossible  to  make  these  dec- 
larations too  positively;   one  can  not  exaggerate 
here. 

But  this  is  very  far  from  being  the  common 
thought.  There  has  been  exhibited  in  New  York 
City  an  antiquarian  curiosity,  one  of  the  old 
morality  plays,  called  "Everyman."  It  is  meant 
to  be  a  facsimile  of  the  ancient  play.  As  a  piece 
of  antiquarianism  it  is  admirable;  as  an  exhibition 
of  religion  it  is  most  horrible.  But  it  is  true  to  its 
original,  and  sets  forth  religion  as  received  in  the 
old  days.  The  sad  fact  is  that  it  is  the  same  sort 
of  religion  that  is  received  too  largely  in  the 
present  day.  Let  me  give  the  plan  of  the  play: 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

First  Death  enters,  a  most  dreadful  make-up. 
In  deep  sepulchral  monotone  he  makes  himself 
appear  as  terrible  as  most  people  think  he  is. 
After  he  is  through  declaring  how  he  is  to  lay 
waste  humanity  for  time  and  eternity,  Everyman, 
the  subject  of  the  play,  appears  upon  the  scene, 
running  in  to  the  stage,  with  a  guitar  in  his  hand, 
singing  a  merry  tune,  keeping  step  to  the  music 
with  his  dance.  He  comes  with  a  dash  upon  the 
horrible  Death,  standing  in  the  middle  of  the 
stage.  Death  gives  him  a  good  scare,  and  so 
thoroughly  frightens  him  that  he  drops  his 
guitar,  and  goes  on  to  make  himself  unspeakably 
wretched  in  hope  of  escaping  hell.  The  whole 
progress  of  the  play  grows  darker  and  darker 
until  Everyman  is  wrapt  in  a  monk's  dress  and 
cowl,  and  dropt  into  a  most  forlorn  grave.  Then 
appear  angels  and  suggestions  of  an  extravagant 
happiness. 

Of  course  this  whole  thing  is  a  travesty  of  true 
religion.  But  it  fairly  represents  the  religious 

[no] 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

ideas  of  that  day;  and  these  ideas  have  made 
such  a  deep  impress  that  they  reach  even  the 
thought  of  this  time,  centuries  later. 

Everything  most  dull,  wearisome,  and  forlorn 
has  been  associated  with  religion.  A  sermon  has 
come  to  be  synonymous  with  all  that  is  soporific. 
In  the  olden  times  they  were  accustomed  to  take 
the  collection  in  a  velvet  bag  and  to  the  end 
of  the  bag  was  attached  a  bell,  to  waken  the 
sleepers. 

A  witty  poet  has  put  into  verse  the  common 
thought  of  the  dulness  of  churches.  He  repre- 
sents different  objects  in  nature  wondering  at  the 
going  of  the  people  to  church  as  follows: 

Said  Grass,  "What  is  that  sound 
So  dismally  profound, 

That  detonates  and  desolates  the  air?" 
"That  is  St.  Peter's  bell," 
Said  rain-wise  Pimpernel; 
"He  is  music  to  the  godly, 
Tho  to  us  he  sounds  so  oddly, 

And  he  terrifies  the  faithful  unto  prayer." 
Said  Grass,  "And  whither  track 
These  creatures  all  in  black, 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

So  wobegone,  and  penitent  and  meek?" 
"They're  mortals  bound  for  church," 
Said  the  little  Silver  Birch; 
"They  hope  to  get  to  heaven 
And  to  have  their  sins  forgiven, 

If  they  talk  to  God  about  it  once  a  week.1* 
Said  Grass,  "What  is  that  noise 
That  startles  and  destroys 

Our  blessed  summer  brooding  when  we're  tired?'* 
"That's  folks  a-praising  God," 
Said  the  tough  old  Cynic  Clod; 
"They  do  it  every  Sunday, 
They'll  be  all  right  on  Monday, 

It's  just  a  little  habit  they've  acquired." 

The  idea  that  the  religious  life  is  one  of  sad- 
ness, while  the  life  of  sin  is  one  of  happiness  in 
any  sense  of  the  words,  is  simply  an  outrage  on 
all  common  sense.  The  one  miserable  thing  on 
earth  is  wrong-doing  everywhere  and  always,  and 
any  man  will  surely  find  it  so  who  tries  that 
wretched  way.  Madame  de  Remusat  tells  us 
that  Napoleon  used  to  say  life  was  bright  at  first, 
but  veil  after  veil  dropt  as  we  went  on,  till  all  was 
blackness  itself.  I  have  no  doubt  he  spoke  truly 
his  own  experience;  for  he  lived  an  utterly  self- 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

ish  life,  and  in  this  there  is  no  escape  from  dark- 
ness. And  when  Byron  wrote: 

"My  days  are  in  the  yellow  leaf, 
The  flowers  and  fruits  of  Iov2  are  gone; 
The  worm,  the  canker  and  the  grief 
Are  mine  alone," 

he  wrote  the  true  results  of  his  ill-regulated 
life. 

Happiness  wants  cultivation;  there  is  a  habit 
of  being  happy  and  a  habit  of  being  miserable, 
and  we  want  to  cultivate  the  first.  I  would  bring 
this  indictment  against  religious  people,  that 
there  has  been  far  too  much  cultivation  of  mis- 
ery. I  knew  one  very  pious  woman  who  would 
never  have  her  piano  opened  on  Sunday.  I  would 
rather  throw  the  lid  of  the  piano  back  against  the 
wall  on  Sunday.  This  woman  also  did  not  light 
her  hall  gas-jet  on  Sunday.  I  should  light  two 
for  one  on  that  day. 

The  whole  subject  of  popular  amusement  comes 
in  here  and  merits  the  most  careful  consideration. 

["3] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

Take  the  drama,  for  instance.  The  drama  is  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  rests  and  refreshments  of 
man  that  have  ever  been  provided.  It  has  always 
been  one  of  the  chief  instructors  of  the  world,  but 
it  has  suffered  greatly  from  the  modern  opposi- 
tion of  good  people.  We  have  been  quite  indis- 
criminate in  our  condemnation  of  the  theater. 
What  would  be  thought  of  him  who  would  con- 
demn all  books  because  so  many  books  are  bad  ? 
Bad  books  have  done  more  harm  than  bad 
dramas,  because  there  are  so  many  more  of  them 
and  they  are  so  much  more  used.  But  we  never 
think  of  attacking  books.  We  cultivate  in  our 
young  people  the  habit  of  reading.  There  are 
noble  plays  that  stir  every  high  emotion  of  the 
soul.  Mr.  Booth  tried  in  New  York  a  high-class 
theater,  but  it  failed  because  the  good  people  who 
had  been  crying  out  against  the  bad  theater  never 
went  near  his  good  theater.  Let  us  understand 
that  we  can  never  crush  out  from  the  human 
heart  the  love  of  the  drama ;  it  is  instinctive  and 

["4] 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

ineradicable.  It  can  not  be  destroyed,  because 
it  ought  not  to  be  destroyed.  It  is  one  of  God's 
great  teachers  of  the  race.  The  one  who  sees 
Lady  Macbeth  walking  in  her  sleep,  trying  to 
wash  out  the  blood-spot,  and  saying,  "Who 
would  have  thought  the  old  man  to  have  had  so 
much  blood  in  him?"  will  have  an  idea  of  re- 
morse that  he  would  not  get  from  a  sermon.  And 
as  we  rely  upon  the  good  books  to  kill  out  the 
bad  ones,  so  we  should  use  the  good  plays  to 
stamp  out  the  bad  ones.  For  so  long  as  men  are 
as  God  made  them,  they  will  go  to  see  tragedies 
and  comedies.  The  church  must  cultivate  legiti- 
mate pleasures,  rebuke  illegitimate  pleasures,  and 
enforce  a  life  of  faithful  labor,  which  only  can 
enjoy  pleasure  at  any  time;  labor  being  the  blest 
law  of  our  life,  legitimate  pleasure  its  recreation 
and  refreshment. 

Good  people  must  take  special  pains  to  give  no 
valid  ground  for  the  complaint  of  the  poet  Will- 
iam Blake: 

[us] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

"I  went  to  the  garden  of  love, 

And  I  saw  what  I  never  had  seen; 
A  chapel  was  built  in  the  midst, 
Where  I  used  to  play  on  the  green. 

"And  the  gate  of  this  chapel  was  shut, 

And  'Thou  shalt  not*  writ  over  the  door; 
So  I  turned  to  the  garden  of  love, 
That  so  many  sweet  flowers  bore; 

"  And  I  saw  it  was  filled  with  graves, 
And  tombstones  where  flowers  should  be; 
And  priests  in  black  gowns  were  walking  their  rounds 
And  binding  with  briers  my  joys  and  desires." 

There  is  a  gentleman  who  has  given  much  time 
and  labor  to  helping  the  poorer  classes.  He 
gathers  them  by  the  thousands  in  great  halls  for 
mutual  improvement,  and  the  thousands  never 
fail  to  come  at  his  call.  I  heard  him  close  an 
address  upon  the  subject  of  his  work,  with  a  vi- 
sion which  he  had  often  imagined.  It  was  of  a 
magnificent  building  fitted  up  with  everything 
that  could  be  desired  for  innocent  and  helpful 
amusement — music,  pictures,  lectures,  games,  ath- 
letics, all  of  the  very  best  quality,  and  thronged 

["6] 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

by  the  laboring  millions.  He  spoke  of  the  great 
and  valuable  work  that  Mr.  Carnegie  has  done 
for  the  supply  of  libraries  and  reading,  but  he 
remarked  that  he  thought  a  building  of  this  sort 
was  more  needed  by  the  laboring  people  than 
even  libraries.  For  they  were  very  tired  after  the 
work  of  the  day ;  rest  and  refreshment  were  what 
they  called  for,  and,  alas,  they  often  found  them 
only  in  dissipation  or  perhaps  vice.  If  such 
buildings,  of  a  really  fine  character,  could  be  scat- 
tered over  the  city,  they  would  do  incalculable 
good,  and  make  a  vast  inroad  upon  vice  and  crime. 
"Thou  shalt  not"  has  had  too  large  a  place  in 
our  methods;  "Come  and  welcome"  would  ac- 
complish wonders.  Perhaps  Mr.  Carnegie  him- 
self may  be  drawn  to  such  a  work  as  this.  I  went 
to  the  People's  Palace  in  London,  and  found  in 
it  an  organ  recital,  a  loan  picture-gallery  with 
some  of  the  chief  works  of  art  in  England,  pic- 
tures known  round  the  world,  a  public  concert, 
bowling-alleys  and  billiard-tables,  all  for  one 

L"7] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

English  penny,  and  the  place  filled  with  people. 
This  seems  the  very  spirit  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
and  his  parable  of  the  good  Samaritan.  When 
the  world  is  made  good,  it  will  be  found  that  de- 
spised amusement  has  done  a  full  share  of  the 
work. 

Returning  to  our  general  theme,  it  may  be  said 
that  we  give  way  far  too  much  to  anxious  and 
troubled  thoughts.  A  good  old  man  once  said 
to  me,  "My  dear  sir,  I  have  suffered  most  in  my 
life  from  things  that  never  happened."  So  have 
we  all  of  us.  It  is  said  that  a  traveler  in  the  old 
days  was  taking  the  common  journey  to  the  West. 
For  some  days  he  wondered  how  he  would  get 
over  a  certain  broad  river  before  him.  He  found 
that  the  river  was  frozen  over,  and  was  glad  to 
hear  it.  He  started  forth  on  the  ice,  but  when  he 
reached  the  middle  of  the  wide  expanse  his  cour- 
age failed  him  and  he  became  quite  demoralized. 
What  if  the  ice  should  break  beneath  him  in  the 
very  middle  of  the  stream!  He  lost  his  strength 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

and  could  hardly  put  one  foot  before  another. 
He  actually  threw  himself  upon  the  ice  and  be- 
gan knocking  with  his  clenched  fist  as  he  crawled 
to  test  its  firmness.  While  so  engaged  he  heard 
the  tinkle  of  bells,  and  saw  a  team  of  horses  with 
a  sleigh  run  upon  the  ice  at  the  edge  of  the  river 
before  him.  He  sprang  to  his  feet,  and,  as  the 
sleigh  jingled  past  him,  saw  that  it  had  a  ton  of 
pig-iron  upon  it.  In  a  universe  of  God's  love, 
our  fears  are  like  this. 

We  are  almost  dying  of  solemnity.  Occasional 
solemnity  is  a  good  thing,  but  it  can  not  compare 
with  joy  as  a  moving  power  in  the  hearts  of  men. 
We  have  the  best  news  in  the  world,  and  we  often 
tell  it  in  the  worst  way.  The  pulpit  tone,  so 
called,  is  a  mournful  tone;  away  with  it!  The 
prayer  voice  is  a  sad  voice;  brighten  it!  One  who 
has  been  used  to  the  full  joy  of  religion,  coming 
into  many  religious  meetings,  would  be  inclined 
to  ask  his  neighbor,  "Friend,  whose  funeral  is 
this?"  Religious  meetings  must  remain  small  so 

["9] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

long  as  the  minor  scale  is  indulged  in.  Men  who 
know,  do  not  try  to  catch  fish  with  pebbles;  they 
choose  the  most  attractive  bait.  They  recognize 
the  judgment  of  fishes;  let  us  recognize  the  judg- 
ment of  men.  I  fancy  if  a  religious  meeting  were 
what  it  might  be,  what  it  has  a  right  to  be,  people 
would  come  crowding  to  the  door,  and  as  they 
looked  over  the  heads  of  the  audience  would  cry, 
"Can  not  I  get  in?  is  there  not  room  for  one 
more?"  That  day  is  coming,  and  we  are  the 
people  who  keep  it  from  coming.  True  religion 
is  meant  for  men  who  love  to  be  happy;  and  it  is 
the  one  thing  that  will  make  them  so.  St.  Francis 
of  Assisi  said  to  one  of  his  followers:  "Repent 
before  God  in  secret,  but  before  me  and  others 
be  cheerful;  for  it  does  not  become  a  servant  of 
God  to  have  an  air  of  melancholy  and  a  face  full 
of  trouble." 

We  would  not  deny  that  there  is  very  much  of 
religion  in  the  world,  but  we  want  a  great  deal 
more  of  it  than  we  have  ever  had.  We  deal  it 

[120] 


REJOICE  AND   BE   GLAD 

out  too  stingily,  as  they  do  food  in  mean  hostel- 
ries.  It  was  at  one  of  these  that  a  disgusted 
guest,  when  the  piece  of  apple-pie  was  brought, 
took  out  his  glasses  and  scrutinizing  it  carefully 
said,  as  if  it  were  a  sample:  "Yes,  that  is  what 
I  want;  bring  me  some  of  that."  So  the  good 
God  says  of  our  religion.  We  have  the  sample 
of  religion  and  as  yet  we  have  little  more.  Sell- 
ers come  to  merchants  with  a  little  wheat  in  their 
hand;  they  have  great  elevators  full  of  it  to  sell. 
Or  they  bring  a  little  wedge  of  steel;  they  have 
car-loads  of  it  to  sell.  Just  so  we  have  a  sample 
of  religion,  but  we  want  the  great  mass  and  sum 
of  it.  And  we  shall  have  them  one  day.  It  will 
all  be  very  easy  work  then.  But  now  some  one 
has  said,  "  When  I  think  of  a  baseball  game,  the 
church  seems  like  an  ice-house." 

Let  us  understand  that  animation  and  enthu- 
siasm are  natural  to  us,  but  we  kill  them  by  our 
cold  ways.  Baxter  says  that  some  good  people 
could  kiss  a  live  coal  to  ice.  We  have  to  practise 

[121] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

before  we  can  come  to  that.  See  the  vivacity  of 
childhood.  We  are  sitting  gravely  in  our  parlor, 
with  company  manners  upon  us,  when  to  the  re- 
lief of  all  a  burst  of  children  enters  the  room, 
with  peal  upon  peal  of  laughter.  Some  proper 
person  says,  "Hush!"  but  many  of  us  feel  that 
we  should  like  to  inject  a  good  deal  of  that  mer- 
riment into  mature  life.  I  was  once  crossing 
Central  Park  in  New  York  on  one  of  the  most 
forlorn  of  old-fashioned  horse-cars.  There  was 
a  children's  picnic  in  the  park,  and  the  children 
crowded  to  the  edge  of  the  road,  and  gave  us 
cheer  upon  cheer,  with  perfect  abandon.  If  we 
had  been  General  Grant  after  Richmond,  or 
Admiral  Dewey  after  Manila,  we  could  hardly 
have  had  a  more  enthusiastic  ovation  than  was 
given  us  in  that  old  horse-car.  I  wished  that 
this  rapture  could  spread  over  the  rest  of 
life — that  we  were  all  taught  to  be  more  ex- 
uberant; it  would  not  harm  us,  no  heart  knows 
how  it  would  help  us.  Here  again,  unless  we 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

become  like  children  we  can  not  see  the  king- 
dom of  heaven. 

This  is  no  new  thing  that  I  am  pleading  for. 
In  the  old  Jewish  state  there  was  a  great  deal  of 
religious  joy.  One  of  their  chief  occasions  was 
the  feast  of  tabernacles,  called  also  the  feast  of 
ingathering  because  observed  at  the  time  of  har- 
vest. The  people  dwelt  in  booths  to  remind 
them  of  the  days  in  tents  of  the  desert.  There 
were  two  special  observances;  the  first  was  the 
pouring  out  of  water.  The  water  was  brought 
from  the  pool  of  Siloam  and  was  poured  out  with 
great  rejoicings  in  the  temple;  probably  a  remind- 
er of  the  gift  of  water  from  the  rock  in  the  desert. 
In  the  evening  of  the  same  day  two  lofty  stands 
were  erected,  each  supporting  four  great  lamps 
which  shed  their  light  over  the  whole  city.  The 
people  engaged  in  singing  and  dancing,  and  it 
was  a  saying  of  the  Jews  that  he  who  had  not 
seen  the  joy  of  the  pouring  out  of  the  water  had 
never  seen  joy  in  his  life.  It  will  be  remembered, 

["3] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

too,  how  the  disciples  were  gathered  in  the  upper 
room  on  the  day  of  Pentecost,  and  the  Holy  Ghost 
came  mightily  upon  them,  so  that  the  people  came 
thronging  to  the  place  to  see  the  wondrous  scene. 
At  first  they  thought  that  these  men  were  drunken, 
for  Peter  explains  that  they  are  not,  but  that  they 
are  filled  with  the  Spirit.  I  venture  to  say  that 
it  is  not  common  for  this  mistake  to  be  made, 
or  that  people  would  think  we  were  drunken  at 
a  religious  meeting.  We  have  not  enough  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  for  that.  We  are  always  the  pink  of 
propriety;  we  are  far  too  proper,  too  little  joyful. 
We  are  less  enthused  and  inspiring  in  our  religious 
meetings  than  at  any  other  time.  In  politics 
there  is  much  enthusiasm,  in  a  boat-race  more, 
in  a  church  service  there  is  usually  none;  and  we 
shall  never  have  much  power  till  the  enthusiasm 
of  joy  has  come  and  filled  us. 

There  is  another  exhibition  of  the  joy  of  the 
early  Christians,  and  strangely  enough  it  is  in 
connection  with  their  graves.  Beneath  Rome 

[124] 


REJOICE  AND   BE  GLAD 

lie  the  catacombs,  the  tombs  of  the  primitive 
Christians.  One  who  made  a  study  of  the  cata- 
combs gives  his  thought  in  this  pregnant  sen- 
tence :  "There  you  find  miles  upon  miles  of  graves 
and  not  one  word  of  gloom."  We  clothe  our- 
selves in  the  deepest  sables,  and  our  funerals  are 
often  monstrosities  of  wo.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  Mr.  Beecher  forbade  every  manifes- 
tation of  mourning  at  his  own  funeral,  and  that 
it  was  conducted  with  that  charge  carefully  ob- 
served. It  was  a  revelation  and  a  preaching  of 
the  gospel  of  victory  over  death  to  every  one  who 
participated.  Dr.  Parker  of  London  left  the 
same  charge  as  to  his  funeral.  Tennyson  wrote 
of  his  mother's  funeral:  "We  all  of  us  hate  the 
pompous  funeral  we  have  to  join  in — black  plumes, 
black  coaches  and  nonsense.  We  should  all  like 
to  go  in  white  and  gold  rather,  but  convention  is 
against  us."  The  gorge  of  the  enlightened  Chris- 
tian, who  believes  in  God  and  immortality,  rises 
against  the  ordinary  undertaker's  performances. 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

I  fancy  the  Hallelujah  Chorus  could  have  been 
played  at  Mr.  Beecher's  funeral  with  the  greatest 
propriety.  Yes,  we  would  have  the  joy  break 
even  into  the  death  and  the  funeral,  break 
everywhere,  as  the  sunrise  breaks  over  all  the 
earth. 

Religious  joy  should  be  by  far  the  greatest  and 
highest  because  it  is  the  joy  that  may  be  for  every- 
body. It  is  undeniable  that  the  wider  the  joy, 
the  greater  it  is.  Let  us  fully  understand  that 
religion  is  good  tidings  of  great  joy  which  shall  be 
to  all  people.  We  continually  limit  it,  but  the  re- 
sult is  that  we  lose  the  joy  ourselves.  It  is  an 
absolute  impossibility  for  a  strong  sectarian  to 
get  much  of  the  joy.  There  is  no  room  for  it  in 
his  pigmy  heart.  Just  as  a  man  casts  out  his 
brother,  he  casts  out  the  joy.  This  is  one  reason 
why  we  may  hope  for  a  wider,  deeper  joy  to-day ; 
because  exclusion  is  yielding  to  inclusion,  nar- 
rowness to  love.  It  is  a  general  principle  of  our 
being,  and  how  fine  a  thing  it  is,  that  the  wider 

["6] 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

our  sympathies  spread,  the  richer  our  enjoyment 
becomes.  There  is  something  inexpressibly 
grand  about  the  enthusiastic  joy  of  a  vast  multi- 
tude. One  of  our  soldiers,  Captain  Ricks,  tells 
us  how  he  carried  the  news  of  the  surrender  of 
Lee  to  an  army  corps.  He  heard  the  news, 
mounted  a  horse  and  started  along  the  road  where 
the  men  were  resting  on  the  march  and  eating  the 
midday  meal.  He  could  be  seen  for  a  long  dis- 
tance along  the  line,  and  he  went  at  full  gallop, 
crying,  "Lee  has  surrendered,  Lee  has  surren- 
dered!" One  great  shout  followed  him  all  the 
way,  a  tumult  of  delight.  And  when  he  came 
where  the  General  was  with  his  aides,  the  Com- 
mander leapt  into  the  middle  of  the  road,  and, 
hardly  knowing  what  he  was  about,  turned  a 
somersault  before  the  whole  corps,  at  which  the 
men  just  went  wild  with  delight.  It  was  the  com- 
bined joy  that  made  it  so  great — it  spread  from 
heart  to  heart  till  it  became  like  a  wide-rolling 
ocean.  Who  then  can  conceive  the  joy  of  a  whole 

[127] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

world,  when  it  has  once  received  the  infinite  love 
of  God? 

There  is  one  way  in  which  we  can  all  help  the 
coming  of  this  great  joy,  even  by  believing  that 
it  is  coming.  Every  one  who  doubts,  delays; 
every  one  who  believes,  hastens  a  world  full  of 
joy.  And  it  is  as  sure  as  anything  can  be  that  the 
joy  is  coming.  The  truth  and  love  and  power  of 
God  are  pledged  to  it.  The  God  of  the  moun- 
tain and  the  ocean,  of  the  sunset  and  the  cataract 
will  not  fail  in  his  highest  work  in  men.  Human 
character  will  be  the  great  glory  and  wonder  of 
the  world.  What  it  will  be,  the  life  and  character 
of  our  Savior  show  us.  There  is  the  purpose  of 
God.  And  at  the  very  summit  of  this  character 
will  be  supreme  joy.  God  loves  happiness ;  it  is  for 
the  joy  that  is  set  before  Him,  He  does  His  mighty 
works.  We  can  lose  ourselves  for  a  moment  in 
the  thought,  how  ecstatic  will  be  the  universal  de- 
light when  God  has  wrought  His  full  pleasure 
with  the  world  and  made  it  full  of  joy  and  love. 


REJOICE  AND  BE   GLAD 

One  of  the  most  pathetic  things  is  to  see  the 
weary  and  disheartened  way  in  which  the  best 
people  often  do  the  best  work.  Whether  it  is  a 
prayer-meeting  or  a  church  fair,  it  is  gone  about 
as  if  not  much  would  come  of  it.  And  often  very 
little  does  come.  When  we  think  of  the  millions 
spent  for  what  is  called  pleasure,  most  tiresome 
and  disappointing  pleasure,  how  slowly  often  the 
pennies  come  in  for  the  benevolent  fund.  But 
this  matter  of  joy  will  make  all  the  difference. 
When  the  hearts  get  full,  the  gifts  will  be  full. 
It  is  the  fun  of  it  that  makes  the  football  field 
so  crowded.  And  there  is  more  downright  fun 
in  religion  than  in  all  other  things  put  together. 
The  love  of  God  is  the  summum  bonum  of  the 
human  heart,  and  nothing  else  can  be,  or  can  ap- 
proach it.  The  love  of  God  is  the  great  undis- 
covered secret  of  the  world.  Sometimes  in  a  re- 
ligious service  when  I  have  felt  even  a  little  of 
what  I  might  have  felt,  I  have  wished  that  I  could 
have  the  grandest  orchestra  of  the  whole  world 

[129] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

with  every  instrument  of  music  that  was  ever 
known,  strained  to  its  highest  pitch  and  power 
to  set  forth  the  majestic  grandeur  and  delight  of 
religious  truth.  If  I  had  all  these,  and  they  would 
not  be  too  many,  for  I  should  have  wished  for  the 
orchestras  of  all  the  worlds,  and  if  I  had  all  these, 
I  do  not  fancy  that  I  should  have  any  difficulty 
in  finding  an  audience,  or  need  to  make  great 
advertisement  to  draw  all  the  world;  the  joy 
would  advertise  itself.  Nothing  ever  advertises 
itself  as  does  joy.  You  would  need  to  have  the 
reserved  seats  for  the  Church  more  than  for  the 
opera.  The  little  boy  in  a  fashionable  church 
said  that  the  ushers  in  his  church  were  to  show 
the  people  where  they  must  not  sit.  How  the 
small  boy  does  get  succinctly  at  the  true  inward- 
ness of  things!  The  ushers  in  a  real  church  are 
to  show  the  people  where  they  are  gladly  welcome 
to  sit.  But  there  is  a  third  use  of  ushers  for  that 
great  coming  day  of  joy,  even  to  show  the  people 
out  of  the  churches.  Benediction  has  been  pro- 

[130] 


REJOICE  AND   BE  GLAD 

nounced,  service  is  ended,  but  nobody  moves; 
why  should  they?  To  what  place  can  they  go 
that  will  be  as  good  as  this  ?  No,  no,  they  know 
when  they  are  well  off.  Like  the  famous  French 
General  after  the  taking  of  the  Malakoff,  they 
say,  "Here  I  am,  and  here  I  stay."  Then  the 
minister  tells  them  that  they  have  been  in  the 
service  three  hours,  that  it  is  absolutely  necessary 
to  ventilate  the  church  and  to  rest  for  a  while, 
but  if  they  will  withdraw  now,  another  service 
will  be  arranged  for  them  as  soon  as  is  best.  But 
this  is  quite  ineffectual;  so  he  calls  upon  his 
ushers  to  come  forward  and  kindly  lead  these 
eager  people  out  of  the  door,  and  at  last  with 
much  hard  persuasion  the  congregation  is  dis- 
missed, to  find  in  the  fresh  air  and  the  sunshine 
the  same  dear  love  of  God.  Then  in  good  sea- 
son before  Thanksgiving-day,  the  football  men 
will  come  to  the  minister  and  say,  "We  want  to 
know  at  what  time  you  are  to  have  your  services, 
so  that  they  may  not  interfere  with  our  game. 

[131] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

For  if  your  bell  should  ring  in  the  middle  of  the 
game,  there  would  not  be  a  soul  left  to  finish  the 
thing.  So  please  give  us  your  hour,  and  do  not 
change  it,  for  we  want  a  game."  And  what  a  very 
sensible  state  of  affairs  it  is,  when  God  and  heaven 
are  really  believed  to  be  better  than  a  game;  and 
all  will  enjoy  the  games  too,  better  than  ever  be- 
fore, and  be  more  courteous  in  them. 

At  the  top  of  Wall  Street  in  New  York  stands 
Trinity  Church.  Beneath  its  beautiful  spire 
rush  and  hurry  the  crowds  of  eager  men.  Money 
is  their  god  and  he  breaks  their  hearts.  There 
is  a  little  touch  of  the  coming  glory  when  a  noon 
service  is  held  in  Trinity,  and  men  crowd  it  in 
the  busiest  day  to  hear  the  word  of  God  from 
Phillips  Brooks,  or  another  prophet  of  the  Lord. 
But  in  that  day  it  will  be  a  constant  feature. 
Trinity  Church  is  fine  as  a  protest  to-day;  it  will 
be  a  triumphant  rapture  then.  As  often  as  its 
doors  are  opened  will  it  be  crowded,  and  at  the 
close  of  the  service  the  preacher  will  say:  "Now, 

[132] 


REJOICE  AND  BE   GLAD 

brethren,  you  must  go  down  to  your  stocks  and 
bonds;  railroads  must  run,  telegraphs  must 
flash,  corner  lots  must  be  sold.  You  must  not 
forget  the  importance  of  money,  and  keeping  it 
as  you  do,  not  above  but  below,  it  will  do  a  fine 
service.  The  congregation  is  dismissed,  and  you 
must  go,  but  we  shall  have  you  back  very  soon 
again,  that  we  promise  you."  And  what  merry 
faces  will  go  thronging  out  to  see  that  they  do 
their  neighbor  no  wrong  in  the  buying  of  a  rail- 
road or  the  selling  of  a  horse! 

Know  all  men,  God's  infinite  love  and  joy  are 
calling  you.  Depths  of  unimagined  rapture  are 
awaiting  you.  Heaven's  joy  and  glory  press  all 
around  the  earth,  and  very  near,  but  we  are  hold- 
ing them  off.  In  God's  dear  name  let  the  joy 
come,  all  we  can  hold  of  it,  all  that  God  can 
send  of  it,  let  Him  strain  His  omnipotence  as 
He  will.  How  profoundly  happy  will  God  be 
then!  and  we,  all  human  language  fails  to  tell 
of  that. 

[133] 


WANTED— A  THEOLOGY 

"For  behold  I  bring  you  good  tidings  of  great 
joy,  which  shall  be  to  all  people." 

In  summing  up  the  whole  subject  we  may  say 
that  as  the  old  theology  is  the  most  terrible  sys- 
tem of  thought  that  man  has  ever  devised,  so  the 
new  theology  is  the  most  beautiful  and  enraptur- 
ing. The  result  of  the  change  from  the  one  to 
the  other  must  be  such  an  overturning  as  the 
world  has  never  seen  before,  and  in  one  great 
direction,  the  direction  of  happiness.  We  have 
erred  in  many  respects,  but  in  none  more  greatly 
than  in  our  misery.  We  have  fallen  absolutely 
away  from  our  rightful  bliss.  We  have  never  been 
as  happy  as  God  wants  us  to  be.  The  old  theology 
led  men  down  to  the  depths  of  wretchedness,  the 
new  will  lead  them  up  to  the  heights  of  bliss. 

The  present  state  of  things  is  built  upon  the 
basis  of  great  happiness,  if  we  would  but  ac- 
knowledge it.  Wallace,  the  naturalist,  asserts 
that  "the  popular  idea  of  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence entailing  misery  is  the  very  reverse  of  the 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

truth;  it  is  very  difficult  even  to  imagine  a  sys- 
tem by  which  a  greater  balance  of  happiness 
could  be  secured."  Of  the  lower  orders  of  crea- 
tures he  says:  "They  have  almost  perfect  en- 
joyment of  their  life — they  enjoy  all  the  happi- 
ness of  which  they  are  capable.  The  present 
condition  of  things  brings  about  the  maximum 
of  life  and  the  enjoyment  of  life  with  the  mini- 
mum of  suffering  and  pain."  Stanley,  when  he 
found  Livingstone,  writes  of  him:  "Under  the 
wayworn  exterior  lay  a  fund  of  high  spirits  and 
inexhaustible  humor.  Every  day  I  heard  in- 
numerable jokes  and  pleasant  anecdotes.  At 
first  I  was  not  sure  but  that  this  joviality  and 
abundant  animal  spirits  would  pass,  but  as  I 
found  they  continued  while  I  was  with  him,  I  was 
obliged  to  think  them  natural."  And,  by  the 
way,  this  very  thing  turned  Stanley  from  a  skep- 
tic to  a  believer.  The  joy  of  Livingstone  was  the 
converting  power  to  Stanley,  illustrating  the  mag- 
nificent and  fundamental  truth  that  the  joy  of 

[135] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

the  true  church  will  be  the  salvation  of  the  world. 
When  we  have  gotten  rid  of  our  abominable  and 
stupid  melancholy  we  shall  win  the  world  to  God, 
and  never  till  then.  The  merry  spirit  of  Living- 
stone was  based  upon  his  deepest  convictions.  In 
the  heart  of  Africa  he  writes:  "Here  there  are 
invisible  myriads  of  insect  life  all  brimful  of  en- 
joyment, working  with  never-tiring  mandible  on 
leaves  and  stalks  and  beneath  the  soil.  Indeed, 
the  universality  of  organic  life  seems  like  a  man- 
tle of  happy  existence  encircling  the  world  and 
betokening  the  presence  of  our  benignant  Father's 
smile  on  the  works  of  his  hand."  This  suggests 
to  us  the  pleasing  thought  that  at  the  one  extreme 
there  is  the  hum  of  all  the  little  insects  in  the 
whole  world,  which  is  a  hymn  of  praise  to  the 
good  God,  and  at  the  other  there  is  the  rapturous 
song  of  all  the  angels  and  saints  of  God,  and, 
when  things  become  right,  all  the  way  between 
these  two  extremes  will  be  found  the  same  hymn 
of  joy  and  praise. 

[136! 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

We  go  along  through  bad  education  and  fool- 
ish ways  of  living,  in  a  very  poor  kind  of  minor 
tone  at  the  best,  but  we  do  not  know  ourselves. 
There  comes  a  time  when  we  are  carried  away 
beyond  ourselves  into  a  sheer  delirium  of  joy. 
We  laugh,  we  sing,  we  cry  with  delight.  Every 
one  of  us  has  known  this  experience.  And  this 
is  a  revelation  to  ourselves  of  our  own  capacity 
of  happiness.  An  apostle  writes,  "Tho  now  ye 
see  him  not,  yet  believing  ye  rejoice  with  joy  un- 
speakable and  full  of  glory. "  These  are  very 
strong  terms,  but  they  are  true.  Yet  how  sel- 
dom do  we  rejoice  thus !  We  have  been  toned 
down,  we  have  been  saddened,  our  lives  have  been 
darkened  by  our  religious  teachings,  and  it  will 
take  time  to  break  away  from  our  grave-clothes 
to  life  and  joy  and  rapture.  This  happiness  is 
extremely  necessary.  It  is  perhaps  the  great 
need  of  the  church  to-day.  There  is  a  confest 
powerlessness.  It  was  pathetic  to  see  a  deputa- 
tion of  ministers  sent  from  New  York  to  ask 

[137] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

President  Roosevelt  to  help  the  churches.  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  is  an  admirable  gentleman,  but 
we  shall  have  to  look  higher.  I  sometimes  fear 
religion  may  be  dying  of  solemnity.  Look  in 
our  churches.  What  an  oppressive  solemnity! 
Would  it  not  be  well  to  act  as  if  God  were  good, 
and  heaven  near,  and  life  glorious?  Would  it 
not  be  good  to  smile  a  bit,  and  beam  on  a  neigh- 
bor instead  of  folding  the  arms  and  looking  se- 
verely at  the  carpet?  One  feels  sometimes  like 
lifting  his  head  and  shouting  by  way  of  protest. 
The  joy  of  the  Lord  is  our  strength.  One  of  the 
first  things  to  be  done  is  completely  to  demolish 
the  old  theology  and  leave  not  one  stone  upon 
another.  God  is  good  enough  in  himself — life  is 
fine  enough  in  itself — the  world  is  beautiful 
enough  in  itself,  but  the  old  theology  has  maligned 
and  darkened  them  all.  It  has  the  strange  ca- 
pacity of  extracting  all  the  joy  from  everything. 
A  young  Scotchman  of  my  acquaintance  lighted 
upon  his  first  watermelon  and  had  to  serve  it  to 

[138] 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

the  company  at  table.  He  had  seen  musk- 
melons,  so  he  politely  cut  out  and  laid  to  one  side 
the  juicy  heart,  and  gravely  served  the  rind  to 
the  astonished  guests.  We  have  been  doing  just 
that  for  some  centuries  in  our  churches.  It  is 
time  now  to  stop,  and  let  the  people  know  how 
good  God  is — 

"How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living, 

How  fit  to  employ 

All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses 
Forever  in  joy!" 

Tear  down  the  sackcloth,  scatter  the  ashes, 
throw  away  the  crape  and  habiliments  of  mourn- 
ing, and  let  joy  have  a  little  room,  and  then  more 
room,  till  joy  shall  be  unconfined,  and  the  songs 
and  laughter  of  God's  sons  and  daughters  take 
the  place  of  tears  and  lamentations.  It  will  be 
found  at  last  that  the  man  who  has  believed  the 
most,  hoped  the  most,  and  rejoiced  the  most 
was  supremely  right.  God  is  not  the  great  sex- 
ton, and  life  is  not  the  great  funeral,  but  God  is 

[139] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

the  great  and  ever  blest  God,  and  life  is  his  ban- 
queting-house  where  his  banner  over  us  is  Love. 
I  believe  that  there  is  a  vast  company  of  people 
who  stand  ready  to  accept  this  religion  of  Love 
and  Light  and  boundless  Hope  instead  of  the 
miserable  substitute  that  the  old  theology  has 
been  so  long  offering  them.  I  believe  all  things 
are  trembling  on  the  point  of  a  great  enthusiasm 
and  outbreak  for  God  and  religion  and  the  true 
spiritual  life  of  every-day  goodness,  kindness  and 
service,  the  love  of  God  and  the  love  of  the 
neighbor.  With  enthusiasm  men  will  fall  back 
on  these  two  great  commandments  of  Jesus,  in 
place  of  the  monstrous  and  horrible  and  base- 
less notions  of  the  old  theology.  I  am  looking 
for  such  a  day  of  humble  piety  and  honest  glad- 
ness as  the  world  has  never  seen  before,  and  I 
am  with  every  man  of  every  land  and  every  creed 
who  wants  to  bring  that  good  day.  As  sure  as 
God  lives  it  is  coming,  and  coming  fast. 
We  must  insist,  then,  with  the  utmost  empha- 

[140] 


REJOICE  AND  BE  GLAD 

sis  that  religion  is  in  no  way  to  be  confounded 
with  the  terrible  dogmas  of  the  old  theology. 
They  form  no  part  of  its  beautiful  essence,  they 
have  been  only  a  miserable  incubus  upon  its  his- 
tory, a  sad  legacy  from  the  dark  ages.  It  is  one 
of  the  marvels  of  history  that  the  scholastic  the- 
ology, the  most  dreadful  of  all  parasites,  should 
have  attached  itself  to  the  life  of  Jesus,  the  most 
beautiful  of  all  lives. 

True  religion  does  not  teach  that  man  is  repro- 
bate, set  against  all  that  is  good,  determined  on 
all  evil,  abiding  under  the  wrath  and  curse  of 
God.  This  is  not  a  ruined  world;  it  is  a  most 
beautiful  world,  and  both  its  majesty  and  its 
beauty  draw  the  hearts  of  men  to  God.  There 
has  been  no  terrible  cataclysm  dashing  into  God's 
exquisite  labor,  but  steadily  from  the  darkness 
to  the  light,  from  the  beast  to  the  angel,  has  moved 
the  race  destined  to  bear  the  glorious  image  of 
God. 

The  human  heart  springs  up  with  a  bound 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

when  delivered  from  its  long  thraldom.  We  look 
up  to  a  most  beautiful  God  whom  with  full  heart 
we  can  call  Father.  In  his  hands  we  lie  with 
the  most  perfect  joy  and  hope.  We  look  round 
upon  a  most  beautiful  world  in  which  God  is 
doing  his  grandest  works.  Nature  has  an  ex- 
quisite loveliness,  and  it  is  not  all  marred  by  a 
terrible  curse.  The  trail  of  the  serpent  is  not 
over  it  all.  Righteousness  reigns ;  goodness  pre- 
vails ;  all  is  moving  forward  by  the  omnipotence 
of  God  to  the  better.  On  the  highest  level  all  is 
supremely  well.  Optimism  is  the  only  possible 
creed.  A  most  kind  and  omnipotent  God  ne- 
cessitates a  result  beyond  our  highest  thought  or 
hope.  The  watchers  of  all  worlds  may  cry, 
" All  is  well."  The  future  is  radiant  with  hope. 
Wrong  will  be  met  and  defeated  at  every  point. 
God  will  gain  his  great  victory,  the  acknowledg- 
ment that  He  is  right  and  sin  is  wrong.  The 
self-evident  glory  and  loveliness  of  truth  and 
goodness  will  shine  through  the  whole  creation 

[142] 


REJOICE  AND   BE  GLAD 

of  God.  Nothing  is  too  good  to  be  looked  for. 
The  result  will  transcend  our  highest  thought. 
The  wildest  fancy  can  not  equal  God's  reality. 
All  things  thrill  with  a  boundless  expectation. 
The  dreams  of  the  poets  will  be  quickly  passed 
in  the  visions  of  every-day  reality.  God  is  a 
much  more  magnificent  worker  than  we  have 
ever  conceived;  and  man  is  dearer  to  him  than 
we  have  ever  known.  Man's  marvelous  powers 
will  not  be  a  wonder  for  their  waste,  but  for  their 
use ;  every  faculty  drawn  out  to  its  largest  service 
in  a  way  to  astound  the  beholder.  Power  and 
environment  now  fully  meet  and  mutually  help. 
The  unhoped  has  become  fulfilment.  The  rap- 
ture of  the  seer  has  become  the  sight  of  every 
common  man. 

But  we  must  take  all  this  home  to  our  hearts; 
we  must  not  doubt,  but  believe;  not  scoff,  but 
sing.  By  cherishing  this  disposition  we  are  in  a 
condition  most  fully  to  hasten  on  the  better  day 
that  is  coming.  We  are  saved  by  hope.  The 

[H3] 


WANTED-A  THEOLOGY 

eye  lifted  with  this  transcendent  joy  sees  the  full 
vision  as  no  other  can.  What  the  future  will  be 
passes  thought.  Holy  Scripture  says  that  heaven 
will  come  down  to  earth,  and  this  is  the  way  of 
its  coming.  We  must  not  "bate  a  jcrjtTof  heart 
or  hope,  but  still  bear  up  and  steer  right  onward." 
So  with  our  full  force  will  we  bring  the  bright 
future  to  the  coming  generations.  This  new 
theology  means  a  boundless  good  for  man,  a  deep 
and  divine  joy  to  God. 

"My  own  hope  is,  a  sun  will  pierce 

The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched; 
That  after  last  returns  the  first, 

Tho  a  wide  compass  round  be  fetched; 
That  what  began  best  can't  end  worst, 
Nor  what  God  blest  once  prove  accurst." 


[144] 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN     INITIAL    FINE    OF    25    CENTS 

OVERDUE. 


LD  21-50m-l,'3 


YB  22136 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


